Why Is It Important to Take Rest Days?

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Exercise is incredibly important for our body and mind for a number of different reasons. It keeps us healthier, helps us lose weight, improves our confidence, helps our memory and so many others.

It is recommended people get at least a bit of exercise every day.

This could be running, going for a walk, doing yoga or lifting weights. And while a healthy lifestyle is important, you want to be sure not to overdo it.

Rest days and rest periods are crucial for your workout schedule.

Even if you feel fine, it is extremely necessary to get enough rest. If not, you could run into a whole host of issues that hold you back from progressing how you’d like.

With that in mind, this article is going to go through a couple of reasons why it is so important to get a good rest after a workout.

Rest Days Will Help You Sleep Better

One of the most important reasons to take rest days and give your body some time off here and there is that it can help you sleep.

While exercise itself can be good for sleep, that benefit depends on a lot of things. If you exercise periodically, and well before your bedtime, it can actually help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep.

However, if you are always exercising, your body is always producing a lot of endorphins.

These have the potential to keep people awake. If you are always on the go and being active, it can confuse your body and it can find it difficult when it is time to relax and slow down.

By exercising earlier in the day/afternoon, and taking breaks every now and then to let your body calm down, you will do wonders for your sleeping patterns.

Of course, you also want to be sleeping on the right mattress. The right mattress can support your body and keep it in good shape.

If a mattress has very low firmness, it could leave you sore. As you can imagine, this could ultimately hurt your ability to have a good workout.

Check out this real simple blog to see some great options if you are looking to get a mattress that is more firm.

Rest Days Give Your Body Time to Recover

Giving your body time to recover is perhaps the most important reason to rest after a workout.

Our body stores energy in the form of glycogen stores and we often pull from this during heavy exercise. We deplete these reserves during a workout and it can take time for them to be replenished.

If you are always working out, you may notice you have less energy and less ability to push as well as you did when you were fresh.

Also, lifting weights causes muscle tissues to break down, and then be built up stronger.

But if you don’t give your body enough time to build these tissues back up, your body will be incredibly sore.

In addition to feeling bad, trying to exercise with sore and broken down muscles will certainly lead to a decrease in how much you can lift and how long you can comfortably workout before the pain begins to take over.

Resting More Lowers Your Chance of Injury

There is always the chance of injury when you are working out.

It could be a tear from improper form, a slip or fall or even dropping weight on your toes or hands.

While injury is a constant threat to watch out for and be careful with, you are generally much more prone to injury when you don’t give yourself adequate time to rest and recover after a workout.

If you try to do a heavy workout with muscles that haven’t recovered, you may be more prone to dropping weight or using improper form to get the weight up.

Dropping weights is, unfortunately, quite common - and dropping a heavy bar on your hands or toes can do some serious damage and lead to a lot of pain.

Improper form is often the silent killer when it comes to injury, as it may not hurt right away. But over time, this bad form can lead to chronic pain in the form of a bad back or pain in the shoulders.

While bad form can be a problem for anyone, it is especially common for those who are sore and dealing with overworked muscles

Also, simply the strain and wear and tear on your muscles can also contribute to injuries like tears.

Depending on the injury, it could keep you away from working out for weeks and months, which is much longer than if you had simply taken a rest day.

Resting More Stops your Muscles From Being Too Tired

Tired muscles is an all-too-common problem that most of us have dealt with at one time or another.

If we overuse our muscles, they will simply feel too tired to continue. And actually, if you use any part of your body too much (whether it be your eyes, your jaw or your fingers), they will eventually become tired.

This fatigue has the ability to not only hurt your workout, but could make day-to-day tasks like reaching up into the cabinet for something or removing the lid of the pickle jar very challenging and even painful.

And the last thing you want is for your exercise to hurt your daily life, when it should be helping it.

Rest Days Improve Your Workout Days

In addition to fatigue, taking a rest day will also help you to have a better workout.

Even if your muscles technically aren’t broken down and have recovered, they can still be tired and feel overworked.

If you are overworking your sore muscles, it will hurt your ability to lift as much or run as fast as you may usually be able to.

In conclusion, we hope this blog post has been helpful in showing you the importance of rest and recovery after a workout.

And while exercise is important, taking days off here and there is a part of any healthy workout program.