Why Do I Need Recovery Days?
Recovery days are just as important as the training you are doing. If you are doing a session with high intensity training one day, you should choose a session with lower intensity the next day. If you have had a metabolism test, your low impact sessions would include exercising in your fat burning zone.
With recovery days I don’t mean veging on the couch all day, but days you spend doing some low impact activities.You could choose activities like walking, Yoga, Pilates and swimming which are great low impact alternatives. You should aim to have a couple of recovery days each week.
What is Recovery?
Recovery is repair of the damage that naturally occurs to structural proteins in muscle and connective tissue during a strenuous training session.
Why are “Recovery Days” so important?
As humans, we have a tendency of thinking that more must be better. However, when we are talking about the body it is all about balance. Too many recovery days, and you will struggle to reach your goals. If your training schedule is lacking recovery time, muscular trauma will accumulate steadily over time as muscles won’t be able to repair themselves properly after each training session. This can result in a plateau or worsening of your fitness.
Symptoms of over-training:
- Fatigue – lack of energy, drained
- Increased incidence of injuries
- Decrease in ability to complete training session
- Decreased immunity – lingering symptoms of colds and illness
- Elevated heart rate compared to normal at rest and during exercise
If you believe you may have symptoms that could be due to over-training, we suggest that you reduce your training intensity for one week. Focusing on low impact (fat burning) sessions for one week might just be all your body needs to get back on track and feel good again. Then work on achieving a good balance when returning to you exercise routine again.
Achieving a balance between training and recovery allows you to give more and therefore gain more from each exercise session
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