You may be surprised to learn that taking a few days or a full week off from working out won't necessarily hurt the gains you've made. Sometimes it's good to take extra days off to rid fatigue in your body.
Yes. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. The majority of workout regimens are 5 days straight and a two day break. What many people who are very serious about personal fitness do is substitute their ``rest days'' with yoga and light cardio to promote muscle elasticity and elevated metabolism.
If you miss a week of working out, your muscles start to stiffen up and your heart and lungs lose 5 percent of their fitness. Your fat levels start to creep up because your metabolism has slowed and lost around 10 percent of its capacity to use oxygen, which ultimately helps us burn calories.
When you stop exercising a muscle, the respective muscle will begin to atrophy (reduce in size and lose strength). This doesn't happen right away, so rest assured your precious muscle wont wither after a week or two away from the gym.
Deciding how many rest days a week you should take depends on your fitness level and exercise intensity. But most people should aim for 1 to 3 rest days per week. You can use your rest days to support recovery by doing light exercise and working on mobility.
Jordane advises taking up to three rest days a week if you're exercising for general health and wellbeing. If you are new to exercise, you may want to take more as you gradually increase the frequency of your workouts.
With only four days in the gym, you can target all major muscle groups and still have enough recovery time between workouts. This makes it an excellent option for those who want to build muscle and strength but have limited time to spend in the gym.
"A lot of people feel and look less tight and toned when they stop working out," he explains. "It's more of a cosmetic thing." When you don't work out regularly, your body composition starts to change. With little physical activity, muscle cells shrink.
After about 12 weeks, most people will have lost enough muscle to be back to their pre-training levels of strength and muscle size, Dr. Hankenson says. “If you go back to working out at that point, it's going to feel like you're starting from the beginning.”
A four-day break from the gym is unlikely to result in significant muscle loss or a noticeable decrease in strength, especially if you have been consistently training before the break.
Physiological muscle memory
While they may lose muscle mass due to their inactivity, it will typically return more quickly than when they first put it on. This form of muscle memory occurs because when you first build muscle, your body adds new cells to those muscles.
The benefits of rest days include: Better mental and physical health: Taking a break is as important for your mental health as it is for your body. Fewer injuries: Giving your body time to rest and recuperate helps you avoid injury.
Downtime between workouts (whether you're lifting, doing cardio or training for a sport) is when our bodies have a chance to actually build muscle. Strenuous workouts cause muscle breakdown, while rest allows our bodies to build it back up.
After about 10 days we start to see a knock-on reduction in VO2 max, between 4-5% after two weeks. After a period of a few days, your body can start to become less efficient at firing muscle fibres, which might explain some of the 'rusty' feeling you get after a few days off.
Although adequate protein throughout the day is necessary, extra strength training is what leads to muscle growth — not extra protein intake. You can't build muscle without the exercise to go with it. The body can't store protein, so once its needs are met, any extra protein is used for energy or stored as fat.
The “whoosh effect” is a term for the noticeable weight loss that some people report while following low carb diets such as a keto diet. Some people believe that the whoosh effect happens when fat cells lose fat and fill with water. Researchers have not scientifically proven the whoosh effect, however.
There are several research-backed reasons why you might notice a slight weight gain after exercise. These include muscle gain, water retention, post-workout inflammation, supplement use, or even undigested food. In most cases, post-workout weight gain is temporary.
Early Changes: Research suggests that within the first two weeks of complete inactivity or immobilization, noticeable changes in muscle size and strength can occur. Some studies have shown that muscle protein synthesis starts to decline after a few days of disuse.
It's not necessary to lift weights every day, and if you do, you increase your risk for overuse injuries and overtraining syndrome. For most people, strength training two to three times a week is sufficient, but if you prefer to split training different muscle groups, then you can train up to five days a week.
Neglecting the gym every once in a while is nothing to worry about — after all, sometimes your body needs to rest and recover. But, when you hit pause on your workouts for more than a week, you might actually be throwing your fitness level into rewind.
Is 4 days of rest too much? Honestly? It depends on what your goal is. If, say, you're working on building strength and you're lifting heavy three times per week, four days of rest from gym workouts may help you approach each session feeling as recovered and refreshed as you can.