Taking a few days off will actually do more to improve your fitness and training. Typically, I recommend that people take a few days off from exercising every six to eight weeks, assuming you work out at a good intensity and are consistent.
It's too short of a break to have an impact on your gains, unless you stop going to the gym after you come back. 5 days in months of you going to the gym consistently is really nothing. Also stressing over it will cause you more damage than taking 5 days off - let yourself have a break, both mental and physical.
Don't worry at all, 5 days are nothing. Honestly, after months that you're already going without skipping I think that this can be a very good occasion to take a rest week, it's very important to take it once in a while, it helps especially muscle growth. When you are back trust me you will feel way stronger.
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.
It is totally fine, and actually beneficial, to take a week off from the gym. Most of your progress is made outside the gym in the form of recovery. When you lift heavy weights, your muscle fibers break down, and then when you aren't working out, they repair with stronger fibers.
3-5 days: This is a period when many runners already start to feel they have lost a lot of fitness and start to worry and lose confidence. In reality, though, there is little to no loss of fitness from any of the key cardiovascular measures over this timescale. VO2 max and cardiac output broadly remain the same.
The bottom line on taking a week off without training
Is that a week away from resistance training shouldn't hinder strength or muscle size according to the research we currently have.
“Taking one or two days off can help you recover more and make more progress,” Olenick said. “We make our gains while training, but we need rest and recovery for our body to heal from that training and [to] make adaptations.”
As a rough guide, you'll probably notice some initial changes in the first four to six weeks, but longer-term changes (what you're working toward) will often take around eight to 12 weeks. The good news is that you're likely to start feeling better quickly.
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.
The more you exercise, the more calories you'll burn. If you're trying to lose weight, you should aim for doing cardio at least five days per week for a total of at least 250 minutes (4 hours, 10 minutes) each week. Contrary to what many believe, you can do aerobic exercise seven days per week.
Skipping a day of exercise won't cause weight gain, but frequently missing workouts may impact your weight management efforts and make it harder to stay motivated.
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.
It's important to acknowledge when you're feeling tired and adjust your workout intensity accordingly. Overexerting can lead to burnout or injury. Sometimes, a gentle stretch or restorative yoga session might be more beneficial.
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.
If you skip rest days, it could lead to longer spells out through injury.
In certain cases, muscle can atrophy alarmingly fast. Bedrest, for example can cause a 12 percent loss of muscle strength per week. And exposure to zero-gravity can result in a 20 percent loss of muscle mass after only five to 11 days. But those are extreme cases — strength and muscle loss doesn't happen all at once.
"When you go on vacation for a weekend, a week, or even two weeks, it's physiologically impossible to gain that much fat," he told BI in 2022. In addition to water weight, the food inside the stomach can actually cause the scale to go up, he added.
Even if we're super-fit to begin with, stopping training altogether will result in a pretty rapid degradation in fitness. Admittedly, the losses in the first week of total inactivity are small and in the first 2-4 days there may even be fitness gains as you recover fully from prior training.
"Working out when sore is okay as long as it isn't affecting your movement to the point where it's causing you to compensate and do something in a way that's unsafe," says Dr. Hedt. "Muscle soreness can be a deterrent to exercising, but it's temporary and the more you exercise, the less you should feel it.
Doing 100 push-ups a day can help build muscle mass, strength, and endurance, especially in your core and upper body. But it can also increase your risk of muscle imbalances, injury, and overtraining. It's important to focus on proper form when practicing push-ups.