Why is rest as important as training

Every athlete, especially a beginner, is familiar with the sore muscles after training. This means that the body has not had time to recover from physical exertion. It is extremely important to give your body rest that it needs after each workout. If you ignore this basic principle, all the efficiency of exercising will equal zero.

Coach, writer, and Ph. D. in physical therapy John Rusin also supports the significance of the recovery period. He believes that lack of time for rest is much worse than overtraining. Lack of rest between workouts increases the risk of injury during exercise itself.

Any training is a stress for our body. Micro-tears in the muscle fibres happen during physical activity and our body lacks the main nutrient for muscle tissue – glucose. During recovery, our body strengthens the injured muscles, so that the next time with that kind of intensity exercising, the same stress does not occur.

Therefore, if you do not give the body some time to rest, the muscles do not have time to make up for the lack of glucose and properly recover. That is why many people do not see any results from training. And constant exercising without rest brings physical and moral stress, as a result of which you do not feel your best and completely give up exercising.

Taken into account that there are 2 stages of recovery for the body:

1. The rapid recovery phase

It occurs right after exercising and lasts about two hours. At that time pulse and pressure get back to normal, the concentration of stress hormones (epinephrine and cortisol) decreases and insulin, which is responsible for the synthesis of substances, increases.

2. The phase of slow recovery

This phase begins immediately after the end of the preceding stage. The intensity of the workout affects the amount of time the recovery takes: regularly – up to 24 hours, for professional athletes – up to three days. During this phase, breathing and the salt and water balance get back to normal. At the same time, the breakdown products are removed from the body and protein synthesis is activated.

Recovery after training is an essential part of any workout routine. Do not assume that longer and more intense exercising brings the results faster. That is simply not true. For maximum performance, you need to alternate between short workouts, daily activity (such as walking) and proper recovery (balanced nutrition, stretching, sleep).