Anytime there is a holiday or I have a vacation planned, I always start thinking about how beneficial the time off will be. I actually wrote another post about Rest right before my California vacation.

I’m bad about taking more than one day off a week BUT sometimes your body really needs more recovery than that. So vacation/holidays are a great time to take a few extra days off!

When you workout, you break down muscle tissues. You create mini tears, which when they heal, make your muscles stronger.

BUT for your muscles to rebuild the layers that were broken down and become stronger, you must take some time off. YOU MUST REST!

For me its sort of hard to accept how important time off is – even though I know that it is just as essential to a workout program as the lifts you design.

I just want to believe that all the work I’m doing in the gym is all that matters, BUT the time off that I take is just as important (if not more so!).

Rest is about more than even muscle repair. If you never rest you are probably overtraining and overtraining has consequences:

1. Your energy level will drop and you may regress in how much you can lift or how far you can run.
2. You can actually lose some of your leanness if you are overtraining. Working out too much can actually cause muscle wasting and fat deposition. You’re burning calories but those calories are coming from predominantly glucose/glycogen and precious muscle tissue.
3. You are unable to sleep soundly. If you are working out too much, you won’t be sleeping well, which will hurt your workout intensity.
4. You’re getting injured more often and have lots of aches and pains. Uhm injuries prevent you from hitting your lifting/weight loss/workout goals. So if you are training so hard you get injured, you need to take some time off because injuries won’t help you progress!
5. You’re getting sick more often. Yep..overtraining can cause a lowered immune system. And getting sick…well that doesn’t help you workout hard!

So next time you think about skipping that rest day…DON’T!