Why Recovery Is So Important When Working Out

Many things are important when it comes to working out. One of them is that you must ensure you are working for each muscle group at least twice a week. Another thing that you must prioritise is your nutrition which is arguably the most important. 

One thing that many people forget when they are going to the gym is to include rest days. Rest days are essential for muscle growth as it gives your muscle tissue time to rebuild and repair torn muscle tissue. Although it allows your muscles to recover, it also allows your mind to rest as well. Here is why recovery is so important as well as why you should implement rest days in your workout routine.

Rest Days Help You Get Stronger

If you want to get stronger, the recovery days are just as important as those when you are working out. Now and again, you need to allow your muscles to rest. Similar to how you need to rest your mind from work now and again. If you don’t have a rest day, the fatigue is going to build up, putting you off from going to the gym. 

After each workout, you create small tears in your muscle tissue, these tears are what help you build muscle. When you are resting, your muscles will be going through the recovery process. Allowing you to put more effort into the exercise next time. 

Recovery To Avoid Injury

Injury can be caused if you do not include rest days. Another thing to mention is that you can prolong injury if you continue to work out. Additionally, when you are injured, you are going to have bad form, simply because you are trying to do the exercise comfortably, causing more damage to those injuries/ muscles. 

Overuse injuries are the most common injuries amongst athletes. This is where you are overworking muscles and not giving them enough time. This can lead to at least three weeks out of training, meaning that you are going to be losing muscle mass in that period. If you don’t want to lose all of that hard work that you have been putting in over the last couple of months, we suggest that you rest enough. 

Rest Days Can Help You Progress

Rest days are a key part for your workout because it helps you progress and if you don’t, then progression could have been halted. When you work out, it releases stress hormones and it can 

give your mind a rest which is what everybody needs. Just like work, doing too much exercise can cause you to burn out, leading to you losing interest in your exercising. 

This is also known as overtraining syndrome leading to you burning out your CNS(central nervous system). The central nervous system is important for your body and is made up of different parts including the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. 

Rest Days Allow You To Put In More Effort For Your Next Workout

When you rest, it allows you to put in more effort for your next workout. Think about it, when you are in the middle of a HIIT workout. You have just worked your socks off in the last 30 seconds and then you have 20 seconds of rest, allowing you to be ready to go again after those 20 seconds. This is similar to when you have a rest day. 

Taking time off is allowing your body and mind to reset, recharge your batteries and get back to work. Your muscles are not going to be as sore as they are the day after so that is another reason why you will put more effort in. Allowing your body to rest and you giving it mini-breaks is what keeps the motivation going.

How Many Rest Days Should You Have? 

How many rest days you have all depends on the individual as well as how many days you workout. If you are working out five days a week, we suggest that you use the other two days as rest. However, that all depends on the type of workouts that you are doing. 

If you are doing muscle endurance workouts, we suggest that you only do these 3-4 times a week as they can be more physically demanding, the same goes for cardiovascular exercises. However, if you are doing lower reps with higher weights, we suggest you do this five days a week with two rest days. 

On your rest days, nutrition is just as important as it is when you are working out. You will need to consume all of the macro and micronutrients that you need to help the recovery process. That will, you are replenishing the damaged cells in your body. 

Summary

There are many key things that you have to take into consideration for your recovery days. One thing that we do suggest is that you don’t completely rest on those recovery days. One thing that is very important for the recovery process is that you maintain your diet. 

If you don’t have time to cook, we suggest that you look at a prepared meal delivery service. That way, they will be making sure you are consuming all of the correct macronutrients and the right number of calories.