No Days Off! Right?
I get it you love to train and want to do so every day.
Don’t get me wrong I love to train as well, but I’m here to give you something to think about as to why you might not want to train every day and what training every day could look like.
Taking a Rest Day
Rest days are important as this is where we actually build muscle and become stronger. The work we do in the gym is only a stimulus to the body to change. If you aren’t giving your body enough recovery then it can’t adapt to come back bigger and stronger. I’ve found for most late Intermediates and early advanced lifters 4 - 5 lifting days is plenty to spread out your workload. Beginners and early intermediates can get away with 2 - 4 days with the sweet spot being 3 days.
Most of us aren’t full time bodybuilders or powerlifters, so we have responsibilities outside of the gym that need to be taken care of right? If you’re hitting the gym 6 - 7 days for 2 - 3 hours then whats taking a hit outside of the gym that you could put more attention toward? Food for thought.
Rest Day vs Being Active
When I think of a rest day the first thing that comes to mind is doing absolutely nothing active. I’m not a big fan of this in most cases as one of the best forms of recovery is low intensity movement. A sure fire way to tighten up and feel like garbage is sit in a chair or lay around on the couch the entire day. Getting up going for a walk, doing low intensity cardio, or going on a low stress hike with your family. All of these can be great forms of recovery to implement into your weekly training schedule to break up the monotony of lifting weights everyday.
Closing Thoughts
Training hard is great, but doing so everyday might be holding you back from reaching your goals. Giving your body the recovery time it needs in order to build muscle and come back stronger is vitally important. This recovery time doesn’t have to be complete rest either. Having 2 - 4 days off from lifting weights or going hard with your training where you have easy sessions focused on low intensity movement can be a great option to keep you active while still recovering. If you’re finding yourself plateaued, while you’re training more than ever and pushing yourself to the limits, consider looking at taking some rest days or swapping some training days for lower intensity recovery days. Give this a go for a couple weeks, monitor how you feel, and how your performance goes.
More isn’t always more, finding a good balance to where you’re progressing and not feeling too beat up is what we want.
I hope this finds you well! If you’re finding yourself stuck at a plateau and don’t know where to go let’s jump on a call and I’ll answer some of your questions and see if we’d be a good fit to work together.
