rest day Archives - hungry and fit

Note that I didn’t say rest. There are some people out there (looking at you, Hungry) who believe in zero rest days and that’s okay as long as they balance properly. I (Fit here) go for one rest day a week and sometimes it’s a rest and recovery day.

What is a recovery day? A recovery day could mean a full rest day where you don’t workout, letting your muscles recover. Other forms of recovery days include yin yoga to really stretch, massage (self or professional), using heat (like a bath or heating pad), self myofascial release (think: rolling out muscles with a hard object), incredibly light lifting to just get your joints loose, or maybe a long walk or easy hike. As you can tell, a recovery day is really up to you. It’s about what you need that day after a week (or a few days) of workouts. It’s about getting in tune with your body and actually listening to it rather than forcing it. For example, my recovery day today consisted of a short yoga session focused on upper back stretches and using a massager on my back. If you can’t tell, my upper back is bugging me.

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.