Rest Days – Do You Rest Or Do You Recover?

Rest days. Ah. You either love them or you hate them. In my case, I have a love/hate relationship with them. I love them on the days when my body screams with sore muscle, but I also hate them on the days where I’ve had a good week of training and quite frankly, I don’t want to stop.

But, by now I know when to stop and luckily, when Sunday rolls round and  after a week of lifting heavy, getting sweaty and pushing my body to it’s limit’s… I know when it’s time to stop, rest and recover. The question is, if I were to ask you if you rest or recover on your days off from training , would you know the difference? No, probably not.

I’ll be honest… It wasn’t until I started CrossFit a few weeks back, when I truly understood the definition of ‘recovery’ and why the heck it is so damn important for our bodies. Up until a week or two ago (opps) I definitely wasn’t recovering enough and instead, I was just partaking in the ‘rest’ part but truth me, that simply wasn’t enough.

In truth, your rest days should be a day of anything but your usual training and exercising. And no, that doesn’t include a shorter day of training. The most important element of our rest days? Sleep. Which we do pretty much every night. Recovery, however, can be anything from mobility work, stretching, massages (deep tissue and sports massage are pretty damn good), foam rolling and quite often for some, active recovery.

Was I doing any of that a few weeks ago? Absolutely not. Just the rest bit – sleeping and having a day off from training. That was it. I wouldn’t stretch, I definitely wouldn’t do some mobility work and fat chance of getting me to do some active recovery! Now though, since suffering from Torticollis last week and being off training for a whole week and not being able to move, I realised 1) just how much we take our bodies for granted and 2) I don’t look after my body enough after all the intense training I put it through. Ahem, apologises body. Which is why I’ve decided to switch up my rest days to ensure my body is getting the best of both worlds – rest and recovery…

Massages

I seriously under-estimated the importance of massage’s for recovery until last week when I had my first one at Solent Hotel & Spa (I know, I know – first one). I went for their head, shoulder and neck massage (which you can read more about here) and crikey, it done a whole world of good for my sore muscles.

According to the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA), massages help to improve athlete’s performance, reduce muscle soreness, prevent injury, encourage better range of motion and help to shorten recovery time.  When having a massage your body not only has a mechanical response (as it reacts to the pressure and movement) but it also has a reflex response where the nerves respond to the stimulation of a massage.

Mobility work

Since starting CrossFit, I’ve started to incorporate a full mobility workout (check out ROMWOD or YouTube some mobility workout) into my working week at least one or twice a week. This is usually done on my rest day or when I’m feeling particularly sore and stiff. See… Rest and recovery. It wasn’t until my training started getting more intense with CrossFit that my began to slowly start demanding for more mobility work and in truth, I think it’s the missing ingredient to everyone’s fitness goals.

If you’re just lifting heavy and powering through conditioning work, then you’re doing a lack of service to yourself. Why? Because my friends, unless you’re a gymnast or an insane flexible dancer, then your ability to move (aka mobility) is probably not the best it could be and eventually your performance as an athlete will start to suffer.

The more mobilised you are in your movements, the greater your fitness performance will benefit.

Mobility work can be anything from stretching, to yoga, to lunges, to even squatting. As long as the movements will help to increase your range-of-motion, your stability and help to control the muscles that surround each joint, then it’s mobility work. So is mobility the same as flexibility? No. Not quite. Mobility uses flexibility and strength (e.g, squatting very low with weight) however, someone with great flexibility may not be able to perform the strength part of holding the weight.  Think of it like this: A person with great mobility will be able to perform functional movements with no restrictions (aka tight hips). So the more mobilised you are in your movements, the greater your fitness performance will benefit.

Stretching

Although my stretching game could be improved slightly (ok maybe more), I have, since the middle of last year, included stretching into my fitness routine everyday. Now though, I’m going to make it my best effort to also include it as part of my rest and recovery routine.

Hopefully we already know this, but stretching can help to improve the flexibility of our muscles, circulation, range of motion, and ultimately, increase our fitness performance. You see, when we exercise our muscles are constantly flexing and contracting and in turn, stretching helps the muscles to lengthen and loosen which aids our ability to maximize muscle engagement ahead of our week of workouts.

Ultimately, stretching goes hand in hand with our mobility work and if you’re suffering with your mobility then stretching the muscles will really help to loosen them over time and in turn, increase your mobility work. My suggestion would be to make sure that you use dynamic stretching before your workout, stretch after and stretch a little on your rest days as well as part of your recovery. You can use YouTube for some inspiration if you’re stuck on what stretches to do!

Foam rolling

Again, if you’re not foam rolling then you’re missing out on another important ingredient. Foam rollers have become increasingly popular over time and all with good reason. They’re basically a tool for a personal home massage (otherwise known as a ‘poor man’s massage’) and are amazing for self-myofascial release, a hands on technique used to apply a low load over a long duration by dragging a force (aka the foam roller) over soft tissue in the body. It’s painful, it’s not pretty and yes, it involves a few ‘oooh’s’ and ‘ahhh’s’ but dang, your trusty foam roller will become your best friend. I’m tellin’ ya.

So yes, that little foam roller really does include some amazing benefits for you body. It can help to increase blood flow throughout the body, increase better range of motion (linking back to mobility work), and promote better movement overall. Not to mention it can help release the tension in our sore and aching muscles which in turn, can help promote better (and often quicker) recovery.

Active recovery

Have you ever noticed that sometimes going from lifting heavy weights, incorporating intense workouts and enduring high intensity workouts to a day of doing absolutely nothing can often leave your body feeling a little stiff and worse off when you get back to it the next day? Yup. I certainly have. Truth be told, complete rest days may be doing more harm to our bodies than it is doing good.

Active recovery however, is completing an exercise or a series of movements at a low intensity, but ensuring that it’s high enough that it gets our blood moving in order to help reduce residual fatigue in our muscles and help to repair them. It can also help with sore muscles (aka DOM’s). Think of it as something that helps to maximise the repairing of your body from a week worth of workouts. Although, active recovery simply isn’t just about repairing muscles. It can actually help recover the chemical and hormonal balance in our bodies that is affected when we workout. As well as that, it helps to repair our nervous system, mobility work, ability to sleep and mentality. My favourite exercises for active recovery would be a brisk walk, swimming, a light cycle or, if it suits you, dancing. Personally, I think anything more such as running or boxing would be a little too demanding.

Resting

Like I said earlier, resting is typically known as sleep and time spent not working out. However, it can differ from person to person. Really, our bodies rest every single day – whether we’re aware of it or not. We rest when we sit down, we rest when we spend an afternoon on the couch and we most definitely rest at night time when we sleep. If you’re like me and you have a desk job, then we’re allowing our bodies to rest then also. Which ultimately can mean that when the weekend comes around, the last thing we want to do is continue to sit on our backside which is why I say it differ’s from person to person.

Personally, I think our ‘rest’ period should be associated mostly with sleep. So ensuring our we get enough time to sleep is utterly important. After all, if we’re not allowing our bodies to rest after drilling it through some pretty intense workouts, then how can we ever expect our bodies to recover properly? Truth is, the less we rest, the harder it is to recover. And the harder it is to recover, the harder it is to progress.

All in all, our rest days, whether your rest days involve mobility work, active recovery or stretching until your limbs almost fall off, they are hugely beneficial for our fitness performance. Combining both rest and recovery work however, can help to promote the recovery of our bodies even more.

So if you ask me what I’ll be doing on my next rest day then it’ll be a bit of everything above. Typically it would involve some active recovery which is always normally a brisk walk to get my body moving and my blood flowing, followed by an evening of mobility work, stretching and foam rolling. Where does my complete day of rest come in? It simply doesn’t. For me, that’s what works for my body( as I spend enough time on my backside during the week at my desk). Like I always say, do what works for you. Trial and error it. Whatever you do though, make sure your body receives the best of both worlds. The worlds of rest and recovery.

Train hard and recover hard.

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