5 signs its time for you to take a rest day

Rest and recovery is as important a part of training as running and lifting. Once you’ve got the exercise bug it can be difficult to stop and take a break, but that is exactly what you need to do in order to avoid the problems that come with overtraining.

Your body needs rest and recovery. Every time you train, you are pushing your muscles and fibers to the limits which create micro-tears within them. When these tears grow back, they grow back stronger which is how training helps improve our performance.

If you don’t give those tears adequate time to grow back though, then they aren’t going to grow back stronger. In fact, they’ll be weaker and leave you at an increased risk of injury. That’s where rest and recovery comes in.

Here are five signs that it’s time for you to take a rest day.

You can’t sleep at night

If you’ve over trained, then your body will be trying to repair your muscles overnight and that increased strain on your central nervous system can overstimulate it, leaving you unable to sleep. A couple of days rest in a row should help to get the body back into its normal sleep pattern, allowing you to recommence training. If it doesn’t, then take a little longer off until your body tells you it is ready to go again.

You are constantly sick

Overtraining can leave your body in continual catabolic state. A catabolic state occurs as a consequence of too much exercise and not enough nutrition, normally protein. It has numerous undesirable side effects such as fatigue and joint and muscle pain and if you enter a catabolic state continually, then it also lowers your immunity, making you more susceptible to illness. Resting will fight off the continual catabolic state and bring your immune system back up to full function. If it doesn’t, then there may be something more serious wrong in which case you may need to visit a health professional. Medicalhealthinsurancetoday.Org can help you get coverage if necessary.

You are still sore three days after exercise

We tend to block out aches and soreness, thinking they are signs that we are getting fitter, faster and stronger. That’s true in the aftermath of exercise, but what you shouldn’t be feeling is constantly sore. Studies have shown that muscles need anywhere from 24-72 hours to recover completely, so if you are still sore from a run 72 hours afterwards, then that is a sign that your body isn’t recovering and needs some rest. You could look for supplements that aid in post-exercise recovery, like Melamed CBD or something similar. Not only can it help your body recover faster, it can also reduce fatigue and help with pain, soreness, stiffness, etc.

You’ve had a couple of bad workouts in a row

Everybody suffers a bad workout from time to time, that’s just the nature of the beast. If however you’ve been doing the same or a very similar workout to what you normally do and you felt slow, weak or that it was becoming more and more of a struggle, then that’s a sign you are overdoing it.

You feel like you need to rest

The most obvious sign you need a rest day? If you feel like you need a rest day. Listen to what your body tells you, it’s doing it for a reason and you’ll feel much better for it afterwards.

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