Physical activity is essential for our health and achieving the fitness goals we set for ourselves. It is impossible to get the body of your dreams without exercising. However, few people understand that being too active can hurt your chances of building muscle and defining your body. Rest days are as important to your success as training.
These are some of the reasons why you should rest
- Rest reduces risk of injury – Many common exercise injuries occur due to overwork, and rest is the most effective prevention measure in this case. Giving your body time to relax and get used to the tension is especially important when starting a new training program because at that point, you don’t yet know what your limits are. Keep in mind that you need to not only have one or two days of rest between workouts but also take short breaks during your exercises.
- Too much exercise interferes with your sleep – Physical activity stimulates blood flow, which means every cell in your body receives nutrients faster and functions better. The downside to this is that it can upset you and interfere with your sleep schedule. Sleep is essential, so you should always make an effort to get 7-8 hours of rest daily.
- Rest allows your muscles to grow – this is a vitally important fact that is often overlooked. Exercise not only works your muscles, it also damages them. Rest periods are necessary for tissues to heal and grow. This is why any professional bodybuilding program is based on exercising different muscle groups each day.
- Relaxing helps you stay motivated – Training regularly is good, but over time it can seem boring, so you get distracted or simply stressed to continue. Of course, some techniques can help you rekindle your passion for exercise. Without stress, training a lot will allow you to have greater motivation and do the exercises much more calmly, with greater concentration.
- It is necessary to protect your immune system – Exercising too much does a lot of damage to muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Your immune system is forced to go into overdrive to heal all of these microfractures. This causes your body to overheat and increases the risk of injury because your natural protections cannot keep up.
As you have seen, rest days are important not only because they are necessary to allow muscles to grow, but this downtime also allows you to stay alert and focused without slowing down progress. To stay healthy and achieve the physique of your dreams, you should rest at least two days a week, without doing any type of exercise or active rest.
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