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How To Know When You Need A Rest Day
Your rest day is as important to your fitness as your training days. It is understandable that when you have a fitness goal in mind, you might feel motivated to go the extra mile to see results. However, when this happens, you tend to push yourself too hard and too soon. You may feel like you have to train hard each day of the week. The results are often disastrous because your body needs its rest days.
In this age of fitness challenges, it is vital to remember that everybody is at a different stage of their fitness journey. You cannot take on someone else’s fitness challenge and expect to cope the same way they do. Listen to your body so you don’t push yourself beyond your limits.
Your muscles need enough time to recover in between workouts and the best way to do this is with your rest days. When you rest, your performance improves and your muscles grow. Also, one of the reasons your fitness progress is stuck on a plateau can be that you are not resting enough.
The following signs are your body telling you that you need a rest day.
You are exhausted despite getting the daily recommended hours of sleep.
If you are getting enough sleep daily but still feel exhausted and fatigued, that is a sign that you need to take a rest day. Your mind and body need to take a break from physical and mental activities relating to your exercises. Half of the transformation your body undergoes happens during rest and sleep. Don’t skip any process.
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Your muscles are too sore from training, even 2-3 days after.
“Push through the pain;” many of us have heard this A LOT during training. However, if your body is still sore 2-3 days after training, pushing through that pain can put you at serious risk of injuries. Instead, take a rest day or two to stretch, have your proteins to rebuild your muscles, and hydrate for the next gym day.
You feel dehydrated even when you drink enough fluids.
So many things can make you feel dehydrated even when your fluid intake is normal. It can be due to the hot weather or it can also be due to overworking your body during training. Dehydration can be a sign that you need to take a rest day. The body needs time to recover, restore, and rehydrate after a hard session.
You have already trained for 5-6 days during the week.
Contrary to popular opinion, you do not have to train daily to reach your fitness goal. Schedule a day for rest and active recovery. It will do a lot of good for your body and your fitness progress.
You get easily irritated.
Anxiety, irritation, and crankiness are signs that you don’t feel as relaxed as you should be. When your body is exhausted from working out without rest, you begin to notice some of these signs. Before it escalates to the point where people start avoiding your moods, try to fix a day in your training schedule to relax and pull yourself together.
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