More is not better. Balance is better.
Over-training while getting little rest in between is a bad situation.
Everyone knows about the “active” part of the equation when getting fit. However, there is also another side that is equally important to getting fit and keeping weight off and that’s rest.
Without a doubt, most of the focus, energy and instruction falls into the “doing” part of fitness and very little is mentioned about the “passive” part.
But they are both equally important and if you are not allowing your body to get enough rest in between your workouts you and your weight will suffer.
Rest is vital to success…but it’s the one element that’s often overlooked as people go about performing their workouts.
Impatience plays a big role in this because people…women especially, want instant gratification, they want results now. But the real truth is that lack of rest is actually one of the biggest contributing factors towards not reaching those targeted fitness goals.
Why rest is important:
The gym is actually where things “break-down.” You’re actually breaking the body down further and further when you work-out and you create tiny micro tears in your tissues that will need to be repaired. The repair process takes place outside the gym as you build your body up stronger than it was before by giving it the rest that it needs between work-outs so that it can properly repair and rebuild.
When you deny your body this required rehab time you’re won’t be getting stronger at all, quite the contrary…you’ll be getting weaker and weaker as time goes on as you continue to break the tissues down further and further without valuable reconstruction.
Proper rest in between your fitness routines helps to keep your motivation high too. Without a balance of workout and rest, things like motivation become very challenging. Your overkill in the gym begins to kill off any desire you had for fitness.
Rest is the time when the body heals itself. Without it your health declines and your recovery begins to lag and your inflammation soars. Not a pretty picture.
All work and no rest is an open door to injury as you place unnecessary stress and strain on muscle fibers, ligaments, and tendons. Yes, they all play a role. When damaged without time for repair, these end up as nagging aches and pains that won’t let up and eventually end up stealing away our youth. What may have taken weeks to fix initially turns into months if not a lifetime of recovery when we ignore what our bodies require in balance.
Another reason excessive exercise with lack of rest in between is a bad thing is because it leads to extremely high levels of hunger to occur. While moderate exercise tends to decrease hunger levels, exercising too much increases them making it much harder to stick to your target diet plan.
What value is there in working out intensely to burn calories only to eat them all back plus some because you’re so hungry and you’re hunger is bought on by an imbalance in your workout to rest ratio?
When you feel as though you’ve reached the point where your work-outs are taking over your life…you can be sure you have a problem on your hands and need to get balanced and back to basics again.
Everyone needs to take at least one full day from training each week. Some people are even better off taking two full days of rest.
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