What To Do On Rest Days

Regular exercise has its benefits, right?

Yeah, it supports your health and helps with your appearance, in addition to many other perks, such as better sleep, more energy, and greater confidence. For these reasons that make a few days of exercise appealing, it can be tempting to want to exercise with even more regularity to speed up the process or derive even more benefits. As intuitive as it sounds to do that, that would actually be a no-no!

By working out more often, the body isn’t given the time it needs to recover from the stress imposed on it during exercise. That can result in chronic fatigue and soreness, difficulty with sleep, and more frequent illness. On top of the many other things that can have a negative effect on you, what may also occur is the desired adaptations to your muscles and cardiovascular system not taking place. All of this is why rest days are as important to an exercise plan as training days are.¹How many rest days should you take?

Good question!

Some fitness professionals suggest that you should take at least one rest day every 3 to 5 days. Others recommend one at least every 7 to 10 days. Where exactly you fall on the number of rest days you should take depends on various factors, such as your training split, fitness level, training experience, and lifestyle stressors, as well as how often you work out, the intensity level, and type of exercise you’re performing. To determine what’s best for you, listen to your body!

So what should you do on rest days?

What to do on rest days is pretty straight forward.

Basically, you should rest on a rest day!

As for what that means, it means doing something other than working out during the period of time that you would ordinarily work out! As an example, if you normally go to the gym at 5PM after work, then you would do something else with your time at 5PM in place of going to the gym.

Easy to understand, right?

Right!

But, you ask, what are some things you can do when you take a rest day? You know, your life revolves around the gym when you’re not working, so you’re kinda lost here and have no idea of what exists to do in the world outside of exercise and helping to make somebody else rich with your labor. Well, don’t worry. Some ideas for what you can do on your rest day are below.

As we see from some of the ideas of what to do with your free time away from the gym, you should refrain from physical activity on a rest day. While that’s true, it’s not entirely true.

Yeah, I lied!

SUE ME!!!

Now, what you want to shy away from on a rest day is activity that places a lot of stress on the body, which means that if you can’t think of anything to do with your life other than being physically active, then you may be active on a rest day so long as the activity you’re doing is low-intensity. That would then turn your rest day from a passive recovery day into an active recovery day. While both provide a break for the mind and body, active recovery days may be more beneficial than taking a complete day off from doing anything active. That’s because light movement can help release endorphins, dopamine, and other “feel-good” hormones that are capable of helping you relax. Also working in favor of light movement is that it promotes healing by increasing blood flow to damaged muscles so they have the nutrients needed to repair themselves, in addition to the improved circulation helping to flush out the waste products of exercise.

Easy to understand, right?

Right!

But, you ask, what are some things you can do when you take an active rest day? You know, you go balls-to-the-wall with every physical activity you do, so you’re kinda lost here and have no idea of what exists that’s low-intensity in nature or can be done at a less intense level. Well, once again, don’t worry. Some ideas for what you can do on your active recovery day are below.

On a rest day, you should take it easy, whether that’s by doing nothing or being active.

As important as it is to take things easy, though, that’s not the only thing you should concern yourself with.

Also of importance on a rest day is nourishing yourself. While you may not require as many calories on a rest day as you would on a training day because you’re not as active, the food you eat on a rest day shouldn’t differ dramatically from the food you eat on a training day. If anything, you may want to eat more protein to support the growth and repair of muscle and more complex carbs to replenish glycogen stores and provide the energy to fuel you through your next workout session. Drinking more water should also be a priority to replace lost fluids, aid with the delivery of nutrients throughout the body, and help prevent you from suffering dehydration, a state that can negatively affect exercise performance.

Glossary: calories, exercise, gym, hormones, intensity, muscle, muscle soreness, rest day, work out, workout, yoga

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Monster Longe

Monster Longe is a personal trainer in San Diego. He has been lifting weights for +25 years and training clients in the gym and online for about half of that time. When not working with clients or making content that's easy to read, understand, and apply to everyday life, he enjoys long walks and leaving buildings crushed and entire city blocks decimated in his wake.

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