The quarantine caused by the coronavirus pandemic has been one of the most stressful events in many people’s lives. You’re not sure when it’s safe to go out, you never know who could by carrying the virus, and there’s no clear end in sight with a vaccine still in development. With all your favorite stores, bars, cafes, and restaurants closed, there’s seemingly nowhere to go. So, you’re stuck inside reading, streaming endless online content, and chatting over video chat with friends.
It’s totally understandable if that’s left you a little stressed out. In this post, we’ll walk you through what you need to do to reduce your stress levels and make it through quarantine feeling calm and relaxed, even in spite of the raging global pandemic.
Listen, we understand: It can be really difficult to get your head — much less your body — up and out of bed in the morning. Sleep is difficult and sometimes even difficult sleep gets worse when you’re stressed by work or overscheduled with family activities or simply just stay up too late watching a movie. But you absolutely can and should rethink whether or not you want to continue avoiding working out in the morning, especially when you read about the benefits that it has.
Take food choices, for instance. The breakfast, lunch, and dinner selections you make throughout the day can be a whole lot healthier if you do that workout right away in the morning. You’ll also be much more alert and positive throughout your day and be able to handle the pressure of whatever life throws at you. Why else should you workout in the morning and how can you get started? This graphic explains it.
A good sleeping pattern delivers a lot of benefits. It helps to keep you looking and feeling young while protecting you from illness and disease. Sleep also improves your mood, making stress and anxiety easier to handle. However, many of us struggle to get our recommended 7-9 hours each night, check out this article from Sleep.Report about fixing your sleep schedule. If you’re one of the many people struggling with sleep right now, there could be a solution.
While you might assume that your phone should be the last thing you use before bed, sleep apps are becoming increasingly popular. These tools improve your sleeping patterns, boost relaxation and even encourage less stress. Let’s look at 7 of the best options.
The most important part of your workout comes after you leave the gym. Here’s everything you need to know about why it’s important to rest well after a workout.
The CDC recently reported that only 23% of Americans exercise regularly. Despite the undeniable health impacts of exercising, keeping fit for most people has only remained a new year’s goal that never actualizes. On the flip side, a significant number of those who work out hardly rest well.
Proper work out recovery is equally important as the workout. Yet, most fitness enthusiasts feel guilty when they have a day off the gym. You should take it easy on your body and rest well.
If you’ve been visiting the gym, you need to allocate the rest days. Keep reading to know why you need to rest well after working out.
Prevention of Muscle Injury
Workout stresses your body. Illustratively, weightlifting and other forms of weight exercises cause your muscles to have micro-tears. Without proper recovery, your tissues will swell and feel inflamed over time.
Rests reduce injury by preventing overuse. A day of rest can rejuvenate your muscles’ functionality. Pushing exercises too hard causes injuries.
Muscle injuries will necessitate you to have more rest days than you anticipate. It is essential to have planned rest days to deter muscle injury.
For Healthy Sleep
Regular exercise is one of the most recommended ways to improve sleep. Similarly, resting promotes healthy sleep. You need to know how to balance training and rest for a good night’s sleep.
Over-training keeps your body on high alert or restless. If your heart rate is unusually fast when resting, you’re probably over-training. You’ll notice that the alertness keeps you from falling asleep.
All forms of workout increase adrenaline and cortisol. These energy-boosting hormones are ideal when produced in moderation. With constant and vigorous training, the body overproduces hormones. Consequently, the quality of your sleep deteriorates. But when you rest well, hormone production can normalize. The balanced hormones will allow you to sleep soundly through the night.
Mental Health
Recent research showed that people who exercised at least three hours a week reduced the possibility of depression by 17% as compared to their inactive counterparts.
Several studies have confirmed the positive impacts of workout on mental health. Yet, there’s a notable gap in research relating to the mental effects of inadequate rest after workouts.
Physical burnout paves the way for mental fatigue. If you’re mentally tired, chances of performing dismally throughout the day are high. Besides, you might experience fluctuating moods.
Your mind needs to rest. Make mental adjustments and convince yourself that it’s essential to rest. While at it, sleep enough, hydrate, and have nutritious meals.
Rest Energizes Muscle Cells
Moderate and high-intensity exercises require a significant amount of energy. The workout depends on glycolysis energy, leading to the depletion of glycogen levels. Resultantly, one feels drained and sluggish.
Having considerably low glycogen levels can have adverse effects on your system. The body might start using protein for energy instead of muscle repair. The confusion in body functionalities affects your overall well-being.
You can’t ignore the importance of rest day in energy replacement. If you’ve been feeling sluggish, rest might be the best solution. Ensure that you take enough rest before embarking on the next weightlifting session.
Performance Improvement
Athlete workout and any strenuous form of physical exercises leave you fatigued. If you don’t rest well after the workout, your typical routine becomes impossible. In fact, you might be unable to continue your training regimen with the initial vigor.
Sufficient rest ensures that you remain active throughout the day. It is essential to know about the key elements of effective post-workout recovery. The information will guide you on what to do on rest days.
Resting will prevent fatigue and increase your energy levels. Besides, you’ll have more successful workouts. Moderate workout and adequate rest will give you more fulfilling results than endless days in the gym.
Impacts on the Immune System
Physical exercise has been one of the highly recommended alternatives to medicine. It reduces the risk of several diseases, such as diabetes and cancer.
Excessive exercise can stress the immune system. The result is increased susceptibility to infections. While the research on the topic has been debatable, cases of increased upper respiratory tract infections have been notable among endurance athletes.
It is crucial to understand your tolerance levels. Regardless of your high fitness goals, you ought to know when to stop. Fitness should not override your immunity.
The cumulative training impedes immunity. For that reason, adequate rest is essential. When you rest well, you can resume your vigorous exercise.
Work Balance
If you fail to rest well, your output in your business or office won’t be desirable. The fatigue can make you spend a whole day on your desk in futility. Exercise shouldn’t lower your productivity.
Not unless you work in a fitness center, the time you spend working out shouldn’t outdo your time at work. Excessive workout and reduced recovery time will affect your resourcefulness in the workplace. Finding a balance is more fulfilling and it will help in your physical and financial growth.
Improve Your Social Life
Working out without resting makes you too fatigued to socialize. On your rest days, you can spend time with your family. Engage in other activities such as baking.
You can use your rest days to watch sports or volunteer in community work. The experience will improve your socialization and make you look forward to resting days.
Conversely, daily fatigue can reduce intentional interaction even with your family members. The mental fatigue leads to mood swings. You might feel the need to stay enclosed in your room.
It Is Vital To Rest Well For Your Workout Program to Be Effective
The positive impacts of regular exercises are unbeatable. But when you don’t rest well, you might not gain from the workouts. Instead, you will deal with a variety of physical, mental, and social implications.
Resting well encompasses several things. It would be best if you got enough sleep, eat a balanced diet, and hydrate. By the time you resume exercise, you will be in a better physical and mental state.
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Regardless of the time of day, stretching is a well-known method to relieve tension along your back, neck, shoulders and other pressure points throughout the body. It also has the capability to reduce stress levels and promote relaxation, which is key if you want to fall asleep quickly and actually remain asleep. That’s why incorporating gentle stretches into your regular nighttime routine has proven to be advantageous for your quality of sleep. In fact, one compilation study review that combined American and Chinese research shows that meditative movements can improve sleep quality and have a positive impact on a person’s physical and mental health.
Stretching also allows you to practice mindfulness as you focus on your body movements and breathing. This teaches you how to be more in control of your mind, and can help you cope more effectively when anxious thoughts creep into your brain before bedtime. Considering about 40 million Americans suffer from anxiety or anxiety disorders, stretching before bed can be a helpful way for a lot of people to catch up on their Zzzz’s.
Here are a few of the best stretches you can do at nighttime to help you relax and unwind before you tuck yourself into bed.
Before-Bed Bridge
This pose is often used in pilates and yoga as it’s great at strengthening the core, and opening up your chest and hip flexors. It also has an array of other health benefits, as doing the bridge before bed can help evoke feelings of relaxation, improve digestion, and alleviate lower back pain.
If you don’t find this pose helpful for easing your lower back pain, the culprit could possibly be your bed, and it may be an indication that it’s time for an upgrade. The best mattress for side sleepers with lower back pain and others who suffer from the issue is one that contains coils because they tend to be much more supportive than all-foam beds, and will help keep your spine in proper alignment.
Low Lunge
This is an optimal stretch if you want to target your hip flexors, glutes, thighs, and groin. You can also open your chest while you’re holding this position for tension relief in your back and shoulders. Just make sure you remain comfortable when doing this pose and don’t strain yourself, or else you might end up feeling stimulated and awake — the exact opposite effects of what you’re going for.
Legs-Up-The-Wall Pose
The legs-up-the-wall stretch is a restorative pose which means it’s essentially a resting pose, and one of its main purposes is to promote relaxation. This specific restorative stretch also eases tension in your neck, shoulders, and back while it targets your glutes and hamstrings.
Child’s Pose
It’d be remiss not to mention child’s pose, another restorative pose that’s extremely popular because it’s a meditative movement that encourages you to meditate as you hone in on the rhythm of your breath. This relaxes your mind, body, and can be a big stress reliever after a long day on the job or watching the kids. Child’s pose also helps reduce tension in your neck, back, and shoulders.
Lying Spinal Twist
The spinal twist is an ideal stretch for individuals who spend a large portion of their day sitting in an office chair. After about eight hours of sitting down hunched over a computer keyboard, this movement stretches out and realigns the spine, and helps improve one’s posture.
Corpse Pose
Finishing off your pre-bedtime stretching session with the corpse pose is an effective way to get a head start on your sleep. Believe it or not, there’s a yoga stretch called the corpse pose where all you do is lay still on the ground (hence the name). It’s the ultimate restorative pose where you’re only expected to focus on your breathing, and is one of the best poses to do before bed to induce sleepiness.
About The Author
McKenzie Dillon is a blogger and sleep enthusiast for The Slumber Yard, a reviews site that focuses on bedding products. In her free time, she likes attending music festivals, reading fiction novels and practicing yoga.
When you’re trying to reach a fitness goal, it’s important to be motivated, but you also need to give your body adequate time to recover from working so hard. That’s why any good exercise plan will include rest days, whether you’re trying to lose weight, build muscle, or simply reach a new fitness goal. While you may be very eager to get back to the gym, here are some tips for getting the most out of your rest days.
Everyone knows that sports activities are great for building character and learning how to work with a team, whether it’s in little league or in a competitive college environment. Most high school and college athletes know that it’s important to make sure that they fuel up for the day ahead. However, with the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it’s easy to overlook all the things that can ensure good health and wellness before hitting the field or the court. This is especially true for athletes who are going through a big transition—such as high school players who are heading off to college.
Learning to manage a whole new independent lifestyle while keeping up with practice and studying is a huge learning curve. College athletes have to juggle a lot of different responsibilities while keeping their diet, health, and routine in check. So how can they do it? Here are 6 ways young athletes can stay healthy and in top condition during their years in college.
Listen to your body. It is a simple rule that many many many of us tend to forget, including myself. Well, perhaps forget is a rather passive word, but instead ignore. And what do we do? Keep pushing our bodies even though it’s saying, “Um, hi! I’m done now, please stop!” Many of us will call this “wimping out” or just a complaint that can be pushed through. But that is where you need to acquire a skill.
This skill is understanding and knowing your own body. Picking up on the language that your body uses to communicate with your mind. Often, beginners to fitness are a little out of tune with this language. It’s taken one of my clients several months to come to the point where he can really tune into his body and understand when it is telling him to stop or push just that one rep farther.
Working it right
Take the time in your next workout to feel out what’s going on with your body. Try to learn the difference between muscle pain (good) and joint or tendon pain (bad). If your muscles are filling with lactic acid, you can feel that pressure, that burning pain, but you know you can just do one more rep to push your body to the proper place. And if you feel your elbow joint or rotator cuff hurting with a sharp pain as you continue to bench press or curl, you know to stop before pushing yourself to injury. You have to walk that tight rope of pain. You have to know which is which.
If you’re unsure, ask a trainer. Point out what’s bothering you and they can tell you if that’s A-OK (ripping muscle fibers to make them stronger!) or a big NO-NO (overly-stressing a joint or ligament). If they’re a good, quality trainer, they will want to help you. Don’t be afraid of asking. It could save you an injury or make a workout that much better.
Chris taking a rest day with the kittens
Don’t be (too) stubborn. Now here, I really need to take my own advice. Tonight we did a chest and triceps workout (here’s a sample). My (we think) rotator cuff has been a bit strained and stressed lately and can get pretty painful with certain exercises like push-ups, chest press, shoulder exercises, and other triceps exercises on the bench. I endured it pretty well tonight, but it kept me from completing as full sets as I would like. However, even though I wanted to push myself harder, I knew that it was worn out after a good number of supersets. I wanted to do another superset or so, but I held back. I didn’t want to seriously injure anything. Often, I can be way too stubborn for my own good, but here is a prime example of listening to your body.
Working myself to a good place where my skin needs to get tougher!
So next time you’re in the weight room or out on a run, keep a finely-tuned “ear” to your body and listen to it!
Cheers! And let us know if you have any questions!
Perhaps you’ve recently picked up one of the many thousand illnesses that seems to be going around. Throughout my family, there has been the flu, the cold, costochondritis, bronchitis, Bell’s Palsy, and more! This is really making you want to spend time with us, right? Anyhow, so you’ve picked up a bug, the cold, something and you’re wondering whether to workout. You were all set on your New Years Resolutions and then you get slammed with a cold, but you still want to keep up progress. What do you do?
Chris with an 104 fever during our vacation
It depends. It depends on what you have and what your body is able to do. Say it’s the first or second day of your sickness…that’s going to be hard. Let’s go through a few sicknesses going around…
Poster encouraging citizens to “Consult your Physician” for treatment of the common cold (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
You have the common cold. You are feeling tired, stuffy, head pressure, and congestion. You may be wheezing a little, sneezing a ton, and coughing a few lungs out. With colds, you can workout depending on the severity of the cold. Like I said earlier, it depends on what day you are on the cold and how severe it is on your body. If you can barely lift your head off the pillow, don’t workout. Instead, rest the day and maybe in the late afternoon, bundle up and go for a walk around the neighborhood. It will wake your body up a little bit and give you a chance to breathe fresh air.
English: Mimi & Eunice, “Viral Patent”. Categories at the source website: Economics, IP, Suffering. Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Say you’re sluggish, may be a little congested, do a workout that fits your condition. Feeling really stuffy? Don’t do heavy cardio. Instead do a light bike workout and then some strength training. It is vital vital vital to keep hydrated and take plenty of rest time, even if you normally don’t. After your workout, you will leave feeling a bit more refreshed and revitalized. However, stay warm especially if you sweat. If you feel like you can’t do something, then don’t do it. This is a vital time to listen to your body.
You have the flu. Now this one is a bit more risky. It is, again, very dependent on how bad it is. Say it’s the flu without any stomach problems. However, if you have a fever, do NOT workout. This will completely throw your body off as it is desperately trying to fight off the infection (thus, has a raised temperature). You will be helping to defeat your body’s immune system if you workout with a fever. However, if you’ve gotten your fever down to a reasonable temperature (98 degrees region), go ahead and do some light workouts–slow cardio and light lifting. Only if your body is up to it.
Flu Wants You! (Photo credit: alachia)
You have the stomach flu. This should be a no-brainer. DO NOT WORKOUT. You don’t want any…accidents coming out of either ends while you’re on the elliptical or the leg press. Stay home, drink fluids, and eat crackers.
In general, if you are going for gains in muscle workouts, don’t workout while sick. Why? Because when you are trying to gain that mass, or create lean muscle, you are breaking down muscle fibers which will then need to be repaired through your body. Your body will need to go through protein synthesis to repair these muscle fibers and guess what? Your body can only do so much at once. When you’re healthy, your body can devote 90% to repairing itself. When you’re sick, maybe only 10% can be devoted, leaving you not only feeling sick, but incredibly sore and unable to workout because your muscle fibers are still torn.
English: Overviw illustration of Protein Synthesis (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Listen to your body and be smart! You can always make gains next week.
Looking at this past week, we only went to the gym three out of five days. Sunday was shoulders and climbing, Monday was legs and climbing, and Wednesday was arms and climbing. (Climbing=Bouldering, until we get more gear) That means that Tuesday and Thursday were more or less rest or recovery days, but this isn’t completely the case. Everyone works out for a different reason. Some people want to feel better, some want to look better, and some actually enjoy it. Although the first two are true for myself, I would never work out as much as I do if I didn’t enjoy it.
Rock climbing on the wall of Voiron, Auvergne Rhône-Alpes championship (Isère, France). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Going to the gym is considered a leisurely activity in my daily planner because 95% of the time, a trip to the gym is on the same level as playing video games. The other reason that they weren’t rest days is based on how active one’s lifestyle is outside of designated workouts. On both of those days, I biked over ten miles to and from jobs throughout the day. It was on a cheap mountain bike, and there were lots of uphills and changes of direction and pace. Also, I was in the water for hours treading and teaching children how to swim. I was never moving too quickly, but overall I probably “swam” a thousand yards (I should calculate, or try to, some day.) Finally, everyday I walk a dog in the foothills, and those hikes/walks are usually around 3 miles long. According to my former Taekwondo master, hiking is the greatest form of exercise in the world… even greater than taekwondo. (He is an 8th degree black belt)
HIKE OR DIE
So never feel bad about taking a day off from the gym! Especially if you have an active and healthy lifestyle. Many people don’t realize just how active they are! Do you clean the house? Pick up your children and carry them around? Mow the lawn or garden? Walk the dog? Shovel snow or rake leaves? Walk up and down stairs all day? All these activities can be extremely taxing on the body and while you might not get the same effect of lifting weights in sets and reps, you can still get a heck of a workout from it.
Houseworks
Furthermore, rest is good as long as you don’t take too many days off it you’re trying to reach a certain goal. Some studies show that you won’t lose muscle gains for eight days, and cardio gains for three days. Now, I would not recommend taking more than two days off in a row because that should be enough recovery time for your muscle fibers, but don’t be too hard on yourself for taking some rest!
LET THOSE MUSCLES REST
Letting your body over-recover is much better than not letting it recover. You want those fibers to undergo fancy scientific processes like protein synthesis so that they come back bigger and stronger. Skip the process, and risk losing the growth that you worked so hard for. Working out, eating right, and sleeping right are the easy parts… your body is doing all the hard work, just get your mind in the right place. Never be too hard on yourself (I can’t take my own advice) and always try to enjoy what you’re doing. Working out every day, or nearly, for four years is really boring, unless you love the pain and struggle.
