Rest Days
-by Clark Hibbs
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Ever felt beat up after a week in the gym? Absolutely toasted? Sore in places you never thought possible… like elbow joints or the actual shoulder blade? A soreness so deep that it’s in your literal bones?
Woof… I have, and it sucks.
If you haven’t experienced this level of soreness before, GOOD. While it can be fun to commiserate with fellow gym-mates and wear that soreness like a badge of honor, it’s actually a pretty miserable feeling.
- Pain in body parts other than muscles
- Low energy
- Irritability
- Trouble sleeping (because it hurts to lay down)
- General misery (LOL “why did I do this to myself.”)
And most of the time when I’ve gotten to that point above? It’s because I was over-training and under-recovering. Under-recovering meaning I was not taking any rest days.
You have to commit to these rest days, my friends.
Well, I guess you don’t have to… it’s your life and you can live it however you’d like, but if you want to avoid nagging aches, pains, and pesky little injuries, you need to dedicate some time to your rest and recovery as well!
Too often we see people get super excited about training and never want to miss a day. Or, we see people become obsessive about hitting a certain goal and they’ll go on a literal path of self destruction in the name of health to try and get there.
A lot of people will feel guilty about taking a rest day. They think they’re missing out on an awesome workout, they’re delaying their progress, or that they lack self-discipline and they’ll start to get down on themselves… that couldn’t be further from the truth!
Rest days will actually help you get to your goals faster.
True story there, and I think it actually shows a remarkable amount of discipline to consciously take a rest day.
A fully recovered body allows you to get better workouts, allows you to workout with better form/technique, and allows you to actually workout at the appropriate stimulus of your workout instead of just grinding through another sweat session just to check the box that you worked out for the day.
You won’t feel rested all the time if you’re in a good gym groove of course… but you should never feel completely decimated. If you’re working out at least 3-4 times a week, you should be good. We’ve seen plenty of people workout 5-6 days a week and feel great as well!
I would also recommend taking at least ONE complete rest day… no light workouts or anything. Take. The. Day. Off.
Listen, we are all about you getting to your goals and being super happy in life, but we also want to protect you from going too far in your fitness pursuits and swinging the pendulum back to the side of “unhealthy.”
Yep, I said unhealthy. If you are constantly broken, beaten up, and feeling miserable (but you’re working out 7-10 times a week), you’re missing the forest through the trees and you’ve actually achieved a lower level of health ????????♂️
We want you working out consistently and building habits to help you stay healthy forever, but also build the habit of taking days completely off from working out and allowing ourselves the time to rest and recover that our bodies need!
Here’s to training hard, and resting even harder ????????
-Clark
