Rest is Important

There used to be an oft-used mantra that went along the lines of, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”, which was meant to show that the endless hustle was the desired action, and resting would get you nowhere. This saying is still around, but thankfully not so much in common parlance now. It even entered popular culture with a film of the same title and a Bon Jovi song using the wording for one of their songs. Hustle, hustle, hustle. It is the only way to make progress. But wait… seriously?

This mantra, of course, made its way into the health and fitness world, with gym goers pushing themselves and their bodies hard all the time. No time for rest! It’ll ruin my gains.

Uh huh… Sure. Your gains are being hampered by the fact you are not letting your body rest, recharge and rebuild.

Rest is vitally important for our bodies, for a variety of reasons. 

One of the most important things we can do for ourselves is get adequate sleep. This allows the body and brain to recharge, clear waste products, restore themselves and sleep has been cited as being as essential to our bodies as eating, drinking and breathing. While you are sleeping, your body can switch off the processes that you use moving around and functioning, and can switch on those that are needed to refresh our vitality.

Similarly, resting between bouts of exercise is just as important to allow the body to recover and, more importantly, adapt. For it is in the adaptation that we see the changes we are after, whether that is to be fitter, leaner or stronger.

Without enough rest our bodies can’t lay down more lean muscle fibres, can’t change the respiratory system to make it more efficient at utilising oxygen, can’t alter how our nervous system works to improve our muscular force production and a whole lot more. In short, by not resting sufficiently you are not allowing your body to help you hit whatever goals you may have.

The rest between bouts of exercise can be very short-term, as in literally your rest intervals between sets of a certain exercise. Or it can refer to longer term, normally where people talk about ‘rest days’.

The short term rest is important as it allows your body to recover somewhat between the sets of whatever exercise you have chosen to do. This includes the nervous system (ever notice how you might feel wobbly or shaky after a particularly heavy exertion?), as well as the muscular and cardio-vascular systems. 

And similarly the long-term rest is just as important, but for the reasons of adaptation examined briefly above. It is in resting that the magic happens, and you will start to see and feel the difference you are making by exercising.

So sure. Exercise hard. But make sure you rest too, and as the quote at the top of this newsletter says: it is the most productive thing you can do for your body and soul.

If you’d like help constructing your workout schedule to suit you and your lifestyle, please get in touch by clicking the gold button under this paragraph. Hopefully speak with you soon.