We are always told to stay active and get regular exercise. Rest days are just as important as exercise. in fact, a successful fitness regimen is not complete without rest days. Taking regular breaks allows our body to recover and repair. It is a critical part of progress regardless of your fitness level or sport.

Benefits of exercise rest day-

Exercise create microscopic tears in our muscle tissues. but during rest, cells called fibroblast repair it. this helps the tissue heal and grow resulting in stronger muscles. and our muscles store carbohydrates in the form of glycogen during exercise, our body breaks down glycogen to fuel our workout. rest gives our body time to replenish these energy stores before our next workout.

Rest is necessary for avoiding exercise induced fatigue. Exercise depletes our muscles glycogen levels.

Regular rest is essential for staying safe during exercise. when our body is overworked we will be more likely to fall out of form, drop a weight, or take wrong step. overtraining also exposes our muscles to repetitive stress and strain. This increases the risk of overuse injuries, forcing us to take more rest days than planned.

When we don’t get enough rest, it can be hard to do a normal routine, let alone challenge ourselves for example we might be less motivated to do an extra rep or Run another Mile. even if we put our self overtraining decreases our performance. We may experience reduced endurance, slow reaction time and poor agility. rest has the opposite effect. it increases energy and prevent fatigue, which prepare our body for the consistently successful workouts.

While regular exercise can improve our sleep, taking rest days is also helpful. Physical activity increases energy boosting hormones like cortisol and Adrenaline. Constant exercise over produces these hormones. So rest can help us get better sleep by letting our hormones return to a normal, balanced state.

How to do rest days right:-

If you are a beginner start running 3 days a week running too much too soon can lead to fatigue and overuse injuries. On the other days, let yourself rest or do different activities. Your other workouts should involve muscles you don’t use while running.

Bodybuilding incorporates rest days by rotating the muscles worked. After exercising a specific muscle group, let it rest for one to two days this gives your muscle a chance to repair and heal. one way to do rest days is to assign a day for each body part. For instance Monday can be leg day, Tuesday can be chest day and so on.

Rest allows our muscles to rebuild and grow. and when you have more muscles you will burn more calories at rest. that’s because muscles burns more energy than fat.

What to do on your rest day:-

Pay attention on your diet and protein. On rest days you should also focus on carbohydrate water, fruits and vegetables.

Yoga is one of the best thing you can do on a rest day. It’s excellent for improving body awareness breathing and flexibility.

Like yoga low impact exercise is a great rest day activity for example walking, casual swimming, biking, dancing etc.

I usually spend my rest day thinking about workout day.

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