Rest & recovery for beginners: Why is it important?

When starting to working out, it’s important to stay consistent. However, overdoing it can lead to injury and burnout, especially for beginners. This This is why rest & recovery is just as important as exercising during points in your training. Just as your brain needs to recharge during sleep, so do your body and muscles. When you take a day or two to rest, it gives your muscles time to repair and for your body to feel recharged before the next workout.

Here are a couple of reasons why it’s important to take recovery days when working out:

1. Repairing & growing muscles
   • When strength training, you form small tears in your muscle fibers. You need rest which allows your body to not only repair these tears, but also build muscle and strength.
2. Injury prevention
   • As a beginner, it takes time for your body to adapt to the new stimulus (AKA strength training, or whatever new kind of training you are doing). This includes your muscles, tendons, and joints. If you are pushing yourself too hard without rest or going up in weights much faster than you should be, then there is an increase of strains, sprains, & other injuries.
3. Improving workout/performance
   • You want to get better, I get it! However, pushing yourself to the limit isn’t going to get you where you want to be. You’ll start to notice that tiredness starts to increase, which will lead to poor performance and slower progress. And who wants to slow the train down!! Rest & recovery helps to restore the energy in your muscles (glycogen) which will make sure that you’re at your best the next time you work out.
4. Balancing CNS (central nervous system) fatigue
   • Working out is great to promote good mental health and sleep. However, overdoing your workouts will have the opposite effect. When we work out, our body increases our cortisol and adrenaline (energy producing hormones) to help with our energy. Constantly exercising without a break will have these hormones in overdrive!!! Since these hormones are meant to keep you energized, you’ll find that your sleep will be disrupted which worsens the fatigue and exhaustion. This is even more important for women during peri and post menopause because constantly having high cortisol will wreak havoc on the body. Also, overdoing your workouts will leave you mentally exhausted which will affect your motivation.
5. Adapting to a new workout routine
   • When beginning to workout, everything is new to your body. Focusing on learning proper form and technique can not only be physically, but mentally exhausting. You want to give your body time to rest while you are learning in order for it to get used to the new movements. Overdoing your workouts will make it harder to progress, or worse, cause injury.
6. Prevent Overtraining Syndrome
   • “Overtraining syndrome is a condition where you feel extreme fatigue, reduced performance, mood changes, sleep disturbances, and other issues as a result of working out or training too much or too hard without giving the body enough time to rest.” (Verywell Fit Article) If you’ve let your overtraining get this far, you could be hitting the danger zone (I call it this because it’s hard to recover and will take time). This could affect not only your performance, but your immunity which could cause illnesses and infections. Your mental health could also suffer and can worsen many other factors.

Now that you know why it’s important to rest and recover, especially when beginning strength training, how do you know when you need to take some time off? Sometimes, it’s hard to determine if you need a recovery day or two. Society has us thinking that we always have to be “go, go, go”, “no pain, no gain”, “self care is not important”, etc. and we might think that we are just being lazy or slacking off. Yes, sometimes you might be feeling a little tired or down and working out will help to make you feel better. It’s certainly a fine line. However, here are some warning signs that you might be pushing yourself a little too much:

1. Consistent muscle soreness
   • A little soreness will happen, especially when beginning to work out as your body adapts. However, if your soreness lasts for days and starts affecting the joints and rest of the body, then you could be overtraining.
2. Obnoxious fatigue
   • This is not the usual “I’m tired, I need coffee” tired. When this type of fatigue hits after working out, you feel both physically and mentally exhausted (like you got hit by a truck!). If this type of fatigue lasts for more than one day, then back off a little and take a rest day.
3. Injuries
   • Not much to be said here. If you are noticing that you are making silly mistakes when working out and getting irritated because you are not doing a certain exercise as well as you normally do, then you could be overtraining. These mistakes could lead to injuries such as strains, sprains, tendonitis, etc.
4. Changes in mood which leads to lack of motivation
   • Oof, you don’t want this one! Working out makes you feel AMAZING and getting to the point that you don’t want to do it anymore could make you feel irritated, have anxiety, lead to depression (because you want to work out, but lacking the motivation), or having mood swings. This happens because your body is under constant stress (remember that cortisol and adrenaline from above??) without resting and recovering. This is a sure sign that you need to take a break and rest.
5. Trouble sleeping
   • Pretty much the same as #4! If you have elevated levels of cortisol and adrenaline (think of that “fight or flight” feeling you get when something scares you) it can disrupt your sleep pattern. A little to get through the workout is fine, but when you overtrain, both hormones can stay high and keep you from settling down to get to sleep.
6. Getting sick often
   • With the lack of sleep and recovery comes the weakening of the immune system (see how one leads to another!!). If your immunity is low, then you could be susceptible to getting colds, infections, & lengthened recovery from these illnesses. If you notice that you are getting sick often and feeling run down, then a recovery day is the perfect prescription!
7. Loss of Progress
   • This one can be frustrating. As a beginner, when you start your strength training journey, more than likely you’ll notice that you are advancing pretty well (especially in dumb bell weight) when working out consistently. However, too much of a good thing can actually hold you back! If you are noticing that you hit a plateau and/or regressing, then you might need a recovery day (or two). Think of the last time you went on vacation and even though you were worried about working out, when you came back to it a week later, you did great (and maybe progressed a little)! This is because your body had time to recover and was ready to workout!

Working out is great! Listening to your body is even better!! As a beginner, be patient. It takes time and effort to achieve your workout goals. No one wants to have to put a halt to it because they are getting constantly sick or sore. Listen to what your body and mind are telling you.

Now that you know a couple of overtraining signs, you’ll be able to stop it before it starts! Adding in more rest/recovery days, getting enough sleep, and focusing on your nutrition can help you on your way to achieving your workout goals and building a solid foundation for lasting fitness.

Sources

Quinn, Elizabeth, MS. Why you need rest and recovery after exercise and Overtraining Syndrome: Warning Signs and How to Cut Back. Verywell Fit.

Nunez, Kristin. Are rest days important for exercise?. Healthline.