Spending so much in the gym can sometimes do more harm than good. Many athletes are not still aware of the importance of balance between exercise and workout recovery.
Rest days are very critical to physical activities such as exercise as it allows the body to recover. Taking a time off from your gym life provides physiological and psychological benefits. It helps the muscles strengthen and rebuild and aids the brain in staving off stress brought by intense training.
To find out more about the wonders of workout recovery, here are the reasons why you should spend your weekend away from the gym. Hang your workout bottoms for the meantime and reap the following benefits of rest days.
What Happens During Workout Recovery?
Overtraining happens when there is a lack of recovery time. This condition may cause depression, poor sports performance, and increased exposure to injuries. These are some factors why a person should not overdo their workouts and take a time off from the gym.
Spending your weekend recovering from intense training will help your body in adaptation and absorption. Rest allows the body to adapt to the stress and absorbs the actual impact of the exercise.
Recovery time gives your body the opportunity to replenish and restore the energy and damaged tissues. If you let yourself do continuous training, you may suffer tissue breakdown, fluid loss, and weaker body systems.
Types of Workout Recovery
There are two categories of workout recovery. One is short-term and the other is long-term.
Short-term recovery, also known as active recovery, happens hours after an intense workout. A person performs a low-impact exercise in between sets of training or intervals of work bouts and during cool-down sessions.
During this phase, energy is regenerated in the lower extremities, allowing the legs to recover immediately. It also repairs soft tissues and removes chemicals that were formed during the exercise.
Meanwhile, long-term recovery occurs between the workout training and the sports competition. It prompts coaches and trainers to modify the design of their training as they include recovery days or weeks to the annual schedule.
If exercise is sustained for a long period of time, then the athlete may not be physically prepared for the tournament.
In both types, having an adequate sleep may impact the sports performance. The lack of sleep affects the mood of a person and their muscle recovery. With a change in the level of body hormones, this can also give you difficulty in coping up with stress.
Work Hard But Rest Harder
The secret to getting high-level performance in exercise or sports is taking more time to recover, According to experts, the greater the intensity of an exercise, the greater the need for workout recovery.
Record and monitor your workout program so that you can identify your recovery needs.
Also, listen to what your body says, whether it can still go through the training or needs time to rest. So instead of continuing your HIIT or weight training, go for low-impact exercises such as yoga or foam rolling.
By giving importance to workout recovery, you help your body maintain a good balance between rest and exercise.