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Don't feel guilty. Rest and recovery is not the same
as skipping a workout. Successful athletes and fitness
enthusiasts on every level build this crucial component
into their training programmes.
While you already know that you have to progressively
challenge your body with activity if you want to build
your fitness, here's a surprise: the actual physiological
gains occur during rest and recovery!
Use rest and active recovery along with proper exercise
variety, and you will take your workout efforts to new
heights and produce greater results than you will if
you only concentrate on work. Now, this doesn't mean
that napping should replace your workouts. It means
finding balance and working out at the right level of
effort so that you enhance your training results. We're
talking quality training here, rather than quantity.
While effort is 50 percent of the training equation,
restoration and recovery is the other important half.
To see results, you have to work out at a level of effort
that challenges your body, whether you're doing cardio,
strength or flexibility training. However, this does
not mean that you have to hurt your body or always work
out harder to get results.
A myth of strength training is that you have to break
down the muscle and then rebuild it to get stronger.
This implies that damage to the muscle is the stimulus
for change. The truth is that the process of "hypertrophy"
(increasing lean muscle size) is directly related to
the "synthesis" (putting together) of cellular
material. The word synthesis means that strength training
is a positive building process, rather than a negative
breaking down process. The bottom line is that you need
to work out hard enough to overload your body positively,
but not so hard you do damage.
Positive overloads cause the body to respond with
increases in strength, cardiovascular capacity and flexibility.
This positive overload, balanced with rest and recovery
is the optimal training formula.
If you attempt maximum effort workouts every day,
you risk overtraining. This can lead to staleness, exhaustion
and injury. Rest and recovery, built into your workout
programme, will keep your workouts productive and your
body healthy. Here's how to do it:
1. Use "active recovery" to
maximise time and avoid over training. Active recovery
or active rest is productive recuperation performed
between exercises or even between workouts. For example,
gentle stretching exercises between strength exercises
will allow you to rest those hard working muscles without
requiring total inactivity. Cross-training with fun,
lower intensity recreational activities between formal
workout days will help you to recover, but still keep
you active.
2.Vary the intensity of your workouts
throughout the week. As a general rule, one or two days
of hard training should be followed by an equal number
of easy days.
3. Vary the activities or exercises within
your programme. Performing the same type of exercises,
at the same intensity every workout, can set you up
for burnout or injury. Your body will also adapt to
the same routine day after day, and you may experience
diminishing returns for your efforts. Changing your
activities and your routine will keep your body challenged,
as it has to adapt to each new stimulus.
4. Take at least one actual day of rest
each week. This is important for both mental and physical
health. If you feel that you have to do something, try
stretching, yoga or an easy activity such as a walk
in the park. Your day of rest will rejuvenate you for
your next few days of workouts.
The importance of variety, cross-training, active
recovery, and actual days of rest for the mind and body
cannot be over emphasised. The optimal results from
your training occur when your training is mixed with
new activities, rest and recovery.
Article by Time-to-Run
resident coach Dave
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