Sometimes it’s hard to know when to stop. But, when it comes to exercise, the experts agree, taking a rest day is essential for both the body and the mind.
“You can only train as hard as you recover,” Katherine Sickler, personal trainer and certified strength and conditioning specialist, tells TODAY.com. Just like your workouts, rest requires commitment to prevent injuries, repair tissue and muscles, and keep the immune and metabolic systems functioning properly.
“The nature of exercise training for most people is to follow a training program intentionally and strategically to get stronger,” Elaine Choung-Hee Lee, Ph.D., professor of exercise science at the University of Connecticut, tells TODAY.com.
When we exercise, we’re stressing the body, Choung-Hee Lee adds. To compensate, the body will alter the way it distributes energy when we’re running, cycling or lifting at the gym, for example, and it will need time to return to homeostasis afterward. The body “has to come back to kind of a normal state before we can introduce another (stressor),” she says.
If it doesn’t, the consequences can be severe.
What Is a Rest Day?
Rest, like exercise, looks different for everyone depending on their activity level and lifestyle, the experts explain. A few factors that can impact your approach to rest may include your menstrual cycle, if you’re training for a competition, if you have children to chase after, your diet, and whether your workouts are recreational or rigorous.
There are, however, a few consistencies to keep in mind when taking a rest day.
A rest day requires you to get in touch with how you feel and what you need, says Choung-Hee Lee. If you feel depleted and a bit worn out, you’ll need healthy food to replenish your energy stores, hydration, sufficient sleep, and light-to-no activity, she says.
If you're not an elite athlete, then on a rest day, prioritize active recovery, including walks, hikes and yoga — the kind of exercise you can do while carrying on a conversation, Sickler says. It means moving your body in a way that won’t leave you feeling sore or overly tired.
But elite athletes, says Choung-Hee Lee, have to give themselves permission to do even less, sometimes for more than one day. And for those whose lives are compounded with outside stressors in their family, friendships or work, rest days call for little to no activity (passive recovery).
What to Do During a Rest Day
When deciding what to do for your rest day or days, Sickler says to stick to what you enjoy and keep it simple. Non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT, is probably your best bet, she adds. NEAT is the kind of movement that gets you active but not sweaty and breathing heavily.
Chances are you’re already doing NEAT every day, so on your rest days, keep it up. You might go to the museum with a friend, the zoo with family, for a swim or a walk, take the stairs instead of an elevator or complete some household chores, adds Sickler.
Getting your body moving in between workouts can contribute to less weight gain, improved circulation, better heart health, and better focus and mood, says the Cleveland Clinic.
If your training volume is exceptionally high, Choung-Hee Lee says you can take it even easier. Think, a stint in the sauna, a massage, stretching or meditation, she says.
Benefits of a Rest Day
Physical Benefits
Rest and recovery allow your body to adapt to your training regimen, says Sickler. “If your body can’t rest, it's not going to get the benefits of all the hard work you put into it.”
Exercise stresses the body and causes inflammation. That’s not a bad thing, but it can be when it continues long-term. Chronic inflammation means the body will stop functioning properly. This can lead to autoimmune illnesses, and heart and metabolic disease, TODAY.com previously reported.
Our immune and metabolic systems are linked to our workouts, Choung-Hee Lee explains. When our bodies are being pushed during exercise, our immune and metabolic systems, and the signals they send through the body, will operate differently due to the stress. Sufficient rest allows these systems can go back to their regular jobs of defending the body against disease and distributing energy throughout the body.
Rest allows the muscles and tissues to recover from stress, too, adds Choung-Hee Lee, until they’re ready to take on your next challenge.
Mental Benefits
While avid gym-goers might feel like they have the strength to keep exercising, they might also be dealing with the “psychological stress and burnout” from pushing their bodies and the additional strain of outside stressors, says Choung-Hee Lee.
“The cognitive load of maintaining a new habit and discipline” calls for rest, Choug-Hee Lee says, as you continue to challenge your body. She recommends “finding time and space to kind of give your brain a rest and be motivated again to do the next bout of exercise."
On a physiological level, Choung-Hee Lee adds, exercise releases hormones, including cortisol, and stimulates neurotransmitters, including norepinephrine and epinephrine, which allow neurons to communicate with each other. Rest allows them to continue functioning as they should.
What Happens If You Don’t Take Rest Days?
Choung-Hee Lee recognizes that convincing yourself to rest can be difficult when so much of the exercise industry used to encourage being better, faster and stronger. But these days, “we know a lot more about the holistic approach to what makes you stronger and perform better,” and rest is essential to that, she says.
When your body doesn’t have space to recover, the adverse effects will start creeping in slowly before setting off a domino effect of damage.
If you skip rest days, at first, you’ll notice changes in your mood, decreased motivation, anxiety and depression, says Choung-Hee Lee. Sickler says your muscles will weaken, too, leading to small injuries that take longer than usual to recover from.
Then, those injuries might ramp up to fractures and tears, says Choung-Hee Lee. Soon, you might realize you’re more prone to infection and that it takes you longer to recover from a simple cold. Women might also notice changes in their menstrual cycles or their periods might stop altogether, she adds.
When you exercise, “you’re intentionally, purposely introducing stress to yourself to hopefully become tougher and tolerate more,” Choung-Hee Lee says. “But if you keep on day after day without stopping, you know at some point it’s going to fail.”
