I’ve seen posts encouraging exercise training regimens captioned “no days off” with intense splits for each day of the week. I full heartedly believe there are safe and effective ways to be active every single day, but it’s important to understand the concept of rest and recovery; whether it’s active or passive, your body needs it to make gains and prevent injury. There will also come days that no matter how hard you try you just can’t squeeze in a workout, or you need to take care another aspect of your life instead. This article touches on the importance of recovery and letting your mind and body lead your exercise regimen for optimal outcomes. To build a positive relationship with exercise in which you don’t dread or obsess over it, you ultimately need to be adaptable. Training your mind is equally as important as training your muscles.
What is the difference between active and passive recovery?
In terms of rest days, active recovery refers to performing activities that raise your heart rate enough to increase circulation to the muscles you recently strengthened without disrupting the rebuilding and healing process during the recovery phase. Gentle yoga flows, light cycling, foam rolling, stretching, even a lowkey jog or walk can all be forms of active recovery. Basically, you are still exercising your body in some capacity that in turn promotes increased blood flow, decreased lactic acid build up, improved flexibility, and less soreness post workout. Passive recovery on the other hand, is a day of complete rest.
While active recovery does have a nice list of physiological benefits, there is also benefit in knowing when to take a day off – utilizing the principle of passive recovery. A healthy workout regimen is flexible and guided more so by how your body is responding to the exercise along with what’s going on in your day-to-day life. If you overdid it two or three days in a row and are so sore you can’t sit down on the couch without uttering “ow,” it’s probably a good idea to take a day off completely or perform very light stretching after a gentle walk where the target is not to get your heart rate up, but rather to just move your body to feel good.
Is it bad if I rotate my workout schedule sometimes?
Absolutely not. Having a schedule to follow is great and it helps you stay on track when life gets busy. However, giving yourself the flexibility to alternate workout days to accommodate you is more important than trying to maintain a perfectly scheduled week of exercise. Perhaps you’re having an off day and you know that leg days are not your favorite, but arm days make you feel strong and empowered. Picking the one that is going to make you feel more motivated and ensure you are giving your all during each repetition is going to benefit you far more than just going through the motions to stick to a calendar.
Likewise, if your work schedule changes leaving you with less time to exercise, switching to arm day because you know you can get that done in 30 minutes at home and tackling a longer leg day session later in the week isn’t going to halt you progress at all. In fact, you are more likely to make progress because instead of just pushing off your Monday workout because you didn’t have time for it, you still exercised. Did it look like the original plan? No. Is that okay? 100% yes. As long as you are allowing for proper rest in between muscle groups, switching your workouts to get them in is a fine idea. Like we discussed in the last article, being consistent is far more important than being perfect.
Mentally I am just not in it today, now what?
This is where the mind body connection comes into play. If you feel in your soul that doing a HIIT workout just isn’t in the cards for you today, it might be better to substitute it for something that would bring you joy while still moving your body. There is nothing more discouraging than starting an intense workout only to quit halfway through. Going for a hike, following a fun dance workout online, or splashing around in your pool for an hour might be better options.
With that being said, physical activity has been shown to be a mood booster. Some tough love advice: sometimes you just have to get up and try to do it. Fitness trainer Anna Victoria and her community reference channeling “Robot Mode,” a time when you hold yourself accountable and get your workout done before there is time to make an excuse. Sometimes the reward of pushing yourself and feeling accomplished at the end of a hard workout is enough to turn your entire day around. If you aren’t sure, give it five to ten minutes of everything you got. If after that time passes and you are still not invested, or worse, you’re more discourage, maybe try to switch to something else for the day and revisit why you were feeling that way later to salvage the rest of your time. Getting in any workout is better than nothing, especially in terms of keeping a commitment to yourself. Like it was mentioned above, this journey is just as much about mental training as it is about physical. You won’t make progress if you don’t change some of your habits, but this is a journey so be patient and understand you don’t need to go from 0 to 100 over night to start feeling better in your own body.
It’s a delicate balance between pushing yourself when you can and listening to your body when it needs a rest. You must be honest with yourself as to why you don’t want to work out and identify if it is becoming a pattern of avoidance. Are you really so sore from yesterday you can’t move, or do you think you can modify and carry on? Are you battling a lot of negative emotions and processing a life event, or would you rather just binge watch Netflix because a new show came out today? No one else can answer these questions for you – it’s up to you to do the hard work and listen to your body. It’s when we aren’t honest with ourselves that we feel that tickle of disappointment nudging us to do a little better next time.
When you are truly in tune with what you need, you don’t feel guilty about taking a rest day or modifying your plan because you know it doesn’t matter what someone else is doing. Spending a little more time on self-discovery is going to bring more satisfaction to your overall life; your body will reap the benefits in and out of the gym.
