Periodization of Stresses: how rest days help you reach your fitness goals and prevent injury.

Periodization of Stresses: how rest days help you reach your fitness goals and prevent injury.

I was inspired this week by a string of injuries that my friends have had. Many of my gym rat friends forget the importance of a “rest day.” Ok, I am guilty of this too. So how do rest days work for those of us who almost refuse to take them?

How Important is Recovery?

Recovery is so important, that the textbook I used in my CanFitPro Certification highlights it.

“Recovery: This principal becomes increasingly important as workouts become more stressful. Recovery should not be seen as optional, but as a mandatory principle of training that must be considered for every program.” (Anderson, 2008, p 130).

Rest days or periods of recovery are when you body repairs. The goal is that your body repairs the damage done during exercise, improving your condition. So a rest and recovery is not nice, it is necessary. You will not build muscle, lose weight or gain a greater cardio output with out sufficient recovery. Jeff Roux, COO and Director of Sport Conditioning of Twist Whitby points out how difficult it is to promote recovery and rest in a culture of intensity, go hard or go home workouts. “Athletes want to give 100% effort, 100% of the time, at 100MPH always shooting for a new personal best time, resistance load or effort.” (Roux, 2013, p42). Sound like you?

How does this look practically?

The most important thing to realize is that recovery allows the adaptations of training to actually take place before working harder again. (Roux, 43). This does not have to be sitting on your bum doing nothing. Think about taking stress off your muscles and joints or lower intensity physical activity. Yoga, foam roller sessions, a massage, a nice walk, or even some house cleaning can take the load off, but still be beneficial activity.

Sleep, Perchance to Dream.

Hamlet Act 3 Scene 1  “and by sleep to say we end, The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks  That the flesh is heir to…”  Uh, ok, he was talking about death,  but sleep is when your body does repair the thousand shocks of step class and bench press that our bodies are heir to. The Melancholy Dane may have been in a better mood if he got adequate sleep.

When we sleep, our bodies release hormones that boost our metabolism, reduce stress from cortisol and builds cells.  “During deep sleep, our bodies release growth hormone, which stimulates the healing and growth of muscle and bone.” (Roux, 43).  So don’t compromise your sleep for your workout, you are only making slowing your progress.

Eat!

The worst thing you can do is starving yourself and workout. Your body needs fuel, choose high quality fuel and plenty of it. This is too big of a subject to get into here, but to summarize; I like this quote from Roux. “It’s like owning a Ferrari and putting regular fuel in it. You would not do that to your beautiful sports car so why do we choose to punish our body every day with bad food choices.” (Roux, 43). So search for high quality fuel. More on that in future blogs….

Periodize your stress.

The best thing is to get a personal trainer (hint, hint) that can come up with a schedule for you.  The general idea is that you do not want to over work muscle groups without sufficient recovery.  On strategy is periodization of stress in a program.  Here is an example:

Monday: Heavy workout day, Chest and Back

Tuesday: Legs resistance workout.

Wednesday: Arms and light cardio.

Thursday: Rest.

Friday: Heavy Cardio.

Saturday: Light Full Body Workout.

Sunday: Rest.

This is just an example; this is not intended to be a suggestion for anyone, but just to give you an idea.  One day, work one muscle group, the next day work a group that was not affected by the pervious day, add in some cardio and rest 2 days a week.  The next week, you may even rest 3 days depending on where you body is.  Also, look at the points where I have Heavy workout days and light workout days. So even some workout days are not HARD days.  Some days are easier than others.

Conclusion.

So I hope you get the idea. You should spend comparatively little time in the gym stressing your body in a smart way, and more time recovering. Do your body a favor. Schedule a massage this week, try a yoga class, spend some time with a foam roller and get a good rest!

References.

    Anderson, Gregory. Bates, Mike. Macdonald, Rod 2006. Foundation of Professional Personal Training. Human Kinetics, Champaign, IL.

    Roux, Jeff. September 2013. Rest, Recovery and Regeneration:  That is when the Magic Happens.  Canadian Fitness Professionals Official Magazine. www.canfitpro.com