When Rest is Best

When you discover the high of getting fit and losing weight, it’s easy to get carried away. Before you know it, you’re doing classes back to back, throwing in weights sessions and doing a run every morning. If someone suggests you take a day off, you panic. “I don’t need a rest!” you insist, but the fact is you do. Even highly trained athletes need recovery days and you can’t become fitter, stronger, healthier and stay injury-free, without them.

“We’re told that the more we do, the fitter we’ll get and that’s correct,” says Fernwood’s advisory sports scientist Dr Aaron Coutts. “But the more you do, the more fatigue you accumulate and if you accumulate more fatigue than fitness, you’re going to perform poorly.”

The problem is that we can become so accustomed to fatigue we don’t spot the warning signs until it’s too late – and the consequences are serious. You can end up with injuries or develop overtraining syndrome, which has a range of symptoms including fatigue, suppressed immunity (leaving you susceptible to illness), hormonal dysfunction (which can lead to loss of periods), increased risk of osteoporosis, cranky moods, decreased libido and a feeling of lethargy.
New exercisers won’t even get that far. If you thrash yourself too hard too quickly, you’ll instantly equate exercise with pain and misery, and abandon your fitness program never to return.

“Not taking time to recover between sessions is one of the main reasons people drop out of exercise programs,” says Dr Coutts.

Just a couple of recovery days a week will prevent that happening. Muscles and bones will get a chance to regenerate, any inflammation will go down, you’ll replace fluid and food and you’ll generally feel full of bounce.
 

Refuel

Clearly, it’s important to give as much thought to a productive recovery as a good workout and Dr Coutts says there are several components for you to bear in mind.

Firstly, you need to rehydrate. You should aim to replace all the fluid you lost through sweat and a bit more besides, so drink at least 500ml after a session. If you’ve done an intensive session of more than an hour, you should also be replacing lost energy. Consider a sports drink which will contain the carbohydrates your muscles are now craving.
If you’re trying to lose weight, you might think that the last thing you want is carbs, but your body will thank you.

“If you starve the body of carbohydrates your body will react by using the protein in your muscle and that means you’ll lose muscle size, your metabolic rate will drop and you’ll end up getting more fat and less fit,” Dr Coutts explains.

Eating a piece of fruit on the way home or a snack of dried fruit and nuts is a good option, although new research from Melbourne’s RMIT University has found that athletes who drink coffee with their post-exercise meal had 66 per cent more glycogen (muscle fuel) than those who ate carbs only.

Secondly, it’s important to give your body time to recover from one hard session before embarking on the next. You shouldn’t be doing high impact activities such as running seven days a week or weights more than three or four times a week. However, spending your recovery day lying on the sofa scoffing muffins will leave you feeling stiff and lethargic. Instead, try an easy cycle, swim, walk or a yoga class.

If you’re really determined to fast-track muscle recovery, go for a cold water swim. Immersing in 10-15 degree water for 10 minutes has been found to reduce inflammation and decrease pain so that you can train harder, sooner – that’s why footy players head to the beach the next day after a game. Sadly, there is no evidence to show that a hot spa will have the same effect.

Thirdly, it’s important to get good quality, regular sleep and, finally, it’s worth checking to ensure you keep up your social activities. While Fernwood tends to be a pretty sociable place, it’s still important to ‘freshen up’ by doing activities that don’t involve exercise such as going to the movies or meeting friends.
 

Know Your Body

Obviously some people need to consider their recovery more than others. Dr Coutts says that studies on older athletes have confirmed that with age comes the need for more rest days. Similarly, sleep-deprived, busy mums also have to keep an eye on the balance.

On the flip side of the coin, there are those who think they need more rest than they actually do. So what’s the best way to judge? Unfortunately, says Dr Coutts, there is no simple biomechanical test and, even when dealing with athletes, if he wants to know if they’re fatigued he just asks them.

“The brain is the central command centre for your whole body,” he points out. “It takes in information on your sore muscles, pain, tiredness, social fatigue and discomfort and that’s the best measurement you can get to gauge how you feel.”
 

Keep a Record

If you still don’t trust yourself to judge when you’re tired then keep a training diary and don’t just write down your weights, speeds and distances, write down how you feel. If you’ve had a few heavy-legged days, it’s time to pull back.

Recovery days aren’t just good for the body, they’re good for the mind. Just visualise dragging yourself back into the gym when your muscles are tired and sore and forcing yourself through a BodyPump class. Now imagine going to that same class after a day spent walking on the beach or stretching to your favourite CD. Which one are you honestly going to enjoy the most and work the hardest at?