Most people realize the importance of their work-outs but not everyone is aware of how important rest is and how it factors into the equation.
The belief that the more exercise you do the better just is not the case.
Believe it or not, lack of rest is one of the biggest contributing factors to people not reaching the goals that they have set for themselves.
It’s important to realize that when you are in the gym you are actually breaking your body down further and further. You create tiny micro tears that will then need to be repaired. It’s not only your muscles that you’re placing stress and strain on during a workout session but your ligaments and tendons as well.
The repair process happens outside the gym, that’s where you build your body back up stronger than it was before. If you neglect to give your body time to repair, when will it have time to grow stronger?
Truth is, it’s not getting stronger at all. In fact, you’ll just be getting weaker and weaker as time goes on and you break the tissues down further and further.
Rest is also critical in order to help you sustain higher motivational levels. If your body is not receiving enough rest between workouts, you’re going to find that your motivation slips because you simply don’t feel like working out. Your desire for fitness starts to decline when you feel like your workouts are beginning to take over your life.
Rest also helps with reducing inflammation in your body. Without rest, your body will be in a state of chronic inflammation as the body is responding to all the damages that are occurring from workout to workout.
The body heals itself while resting and without it recovery will be lagging, inflammation will be high and you will not feel well on a day to day basis.
If you constantly workout without sufficient rest, the next problem that going to occur due to this is overuse injuries. You’ll be placing stress and strain on muscle fibers, ligaments and tendons and over time you’re more likely to find that you’re dealing with nagging pains and aches that just don’t let up.
In some cases when you’re dealing with back pain, or knee pain you may find that you don’t recover and you’ll be dealing with these conditions on occasion for the rest of your life.
Another valid reason that exercising too much can be a very bad thing is because it can lead to extremely high levels of hunger. Moderate exercising tends to decrease your hunger level while exercising too much will increase it. When your appetite is increased, it is harder to stick to your target diet plan and maintaining a good diet is a key for success.
While exercising burns calories, if you just eat back all the calories you’ve burned and then some because you are hungry it isn’t doing to do you any favors.
Finally, rest is vital for results because it’s also going to go a long way towards helping you avoid overtraining. Overtraining is a very real and although it does take a high amount of exercise to reach this state if you’re doing a number of higher volume workouts and also eating a calorie reduced diet chances are that you will be entertaining a state of overtraining with time.
Overtraining comes with its own list of problems including decrease libido, impaired immune function, depression, changes in thyroid function and alteration in reproductive hormones and that’s just for beginners. It’s not a healthy situation to find youself in and it can take weeks if not months to get out of it.
Everyone needs to be taking off one full day from their training each week and most people would be better off with two days’ rest.
Learn to listen to your body when it says it has had enough. Remember, this time it’s not your mind trying to trick you…it’s your body trying to relay and important message to you and you would be wise to listen.
It’s time to throw everything away that you’ve ever been told about dieting and exercise and learn what it really takes to win the weight loss battle…
“Rebound Free Weight Loss”…Discover why your mindset and your body must be healthy first if you hope to lose weight and keep it off forever.
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