Why You Need To Take Rest Days

Rest days from the gym are a necessary part of your overall growth and recovery. As an absolute minimum, you should take at least one rest day per week.

Training 7 days may seem like you’re dedicated, but what you’re actually doing is training your way into a physical burnout, and you know what happens when you burnout? You drastically increase your chances of injury.

It’s totally understandable when you’re in the zone, smashing your workouts and you’re excited to show up every day to train, taking a rest day may be the last thing on your mind. But you need to find a healthy balance between doing the thing you love, and taking care of yourself physically.

The bottom line is, rest days from the gym should be built into your overall weekly workout plan.

In this article we will delve into what a rest day is, how to plan one, why you need to take them, what happens to your body when you take a rest day, why avoiding them is sabotaging your gains, how many you should take and finally, for the women who can’t sit still, we’ll explain active recovery.

Why You Need To Take Rest Days Contents

What Is A Gym Rest Day

How To Strategically Plan A Rest Day

Why Do I Need To Take A Rest Day From The Gym?

What Happens To My Body When I Take A Rest Day?

Why Is Not Taking A Rest Day Sabotaging My Gains?

How Many Rest Days Should I Take Each Week?

What Is Active Recovery?

What Is A Gym Rest Day

A rest day from the gym is a planned day, (or days) off from training. It is something that is strategically scheduled into your weekly workout rotation.

While some may choose to take random rest days, experienced lifters always take pre-planned rest days, because the rest day is part of a bigger training picture and not just a random day off.

How To Strategically Plan A Rest Day

Your entire weekly workout schedule should be planned, and that includes scheduling in your rest day at a time that optimises your recovery and performance.

The first thing to consider is your workout split. That means planning which muscle groups you are going to train on which days. You can do a rotation of full body workouts with rest days in between, or a simple upper/lower split with a rest day every 3rd day.

Moving into the more advanced realm, when you’re breaking down your workouts by muscle group, you have 2 important things to consider…

First, you need to make sure that you are covering all muscle groups across the week in your workouts. This kind of breakdown is excellent in terms of allowing each muscle group sufficient recovery between workouts. And secondly, you still need to plan at least one full day off to allow your entire body to rest and recover.

Why Do I Need To Take A Rest Day From The Gym?

Your muscles are torn in the gym and recover in your sleep, that’s the short answer to why you need to take a rest day. It is at rest when your muscles actually grow.

The more sinister response is that when you don’t take a rest day you put yourself at risk of an overuse or acute injury. One of those and you’ll be forced to take many rest days to recover.

Rest is as important as the workout, that’s why you need to take rest days from the gym.

What Happens To My Body When I Take A Rest Day?

When you take a rest day from the gym you allow your body to fully recover and recharge. If you’re training with adequate intensity, it will take the muscle group you trained a few days to fully recover at least.

During your rest day your body works hard to repair the tiny tears that were created in your workout. You can support this process with a protein rich diet and rest.

It is when your body recovers that your muscles grow.

Why Is Not Taking A Rest Day Sabotaging My Gains?

Rest and recovery is essential for your overall strength and performance, if you keep pushing yourself through fatigue, failing to take a rest day, you aren’t going to be performing at your absolute best with each workout.

You can't perform on empty, you may be able to push through for a while, but you will crash and burn eventually.

This isn’t about being lazy or “not wanting it enough”, this toxic mantra from some people in the online fitness world isn’t serving anybody.

If you want optimum results from your workouts, you need to strategically plan your rest days so that your body can recover and is able to perform at its best with each workout.

How Many Rest Days Should I Take Each Week?

This really depends on you. For some people it will be easy and natural to choose rest days because maybe they can only commit 3-4 days a week to workout anyway. That’s absolutely fine, there is a natural break that will allow your body to recover.

If you’re training daily, you need to schedule at least one rest day per week. You should also consider the intensity of your workouts, if you’re in a heavy bulk, you might want to take an extra rest day to recover.

There is no “one for all” answer, this is why it pays to take the time to learn how to structure your own workout plans.

What Is Active Recovery?

If you’re someone who really doesn’t like to take a day out for complete rest and recovery, you can adopt the active recovery method.

What this means is that your rest days are rest from the usual intensity of your workouts, but you still do something that is lightly active.

This is a good time to go for a walk in nature, go for a casual swim, bike ride, do some yoga, general stretching, or even some gardening.

Pretty much anything that is active, but not intense.