Sunday...a Day of Rest

Everyone needs an off day. Sundays are good days for that because this is when you can finish up those household chores, or just sit around and watch football all afternoon. When you are creating a workout program don't forget to assign one of those days as a "rest" day.  Your body needs time to recover.  You don't want to over work or over stress your body because this can actually have adverse effects on your immune system. You can end up getting something called "overtraining syndrome" and this is something that you definitely don't want.

Overtraining syndrome is what happens when their is an insufficient amount of rest in your training program.  If this happens then regeneration cannot occur, and performance will also start decreasing.  Don't get me wrong overtraining doesn't occur right away, it's something that develops over time. Overtraining can best be defined as the state where the athlete has been repeatedly stressed by training to the point where rest is no longer adequate to allow for recovery. The "overtraining syndrome" is the name given to the collection of emotional, behavioral, and physical symptoms due to overtraining that has persisted for weeks to months.

For example I workout six days a week.  Monday, Wednesday and Friday are dedicated to weight training and Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday are dedicated to active recovery (cardio days).  That leaves Sunday as my "recovery day".  Also, know that because I'm working out six days a week doesn't mean that I am working out for hours each day.  Most of my workouts are between 25 and 35 minutes.  If you workout at a high intensity for a short period of time you are going to burn the same if not more calories as you would when you are doing a workout for an hour or longer.  By taking shorter rest period throughout your workout it automatically builds that cardio component into your workout and therefore increasing the amount of calories burned.

I hope that you as readers are finding this information helpful. I will always try to post information that is useful to you.  If their are any topics that you want to know more about leave me a comment about it and I will do my best to address it in a later post.

Have a great rest of your weekend and remember to REST!