It can be tough to convince yourself to take a rest day from working out. Here’s how to tell when your body needs a rest day from training at the gym.

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Picture a brand new sports car. Sleek lines. Souped up engine ready to hit the open road with the ferocity of a lion on the hunt. Sure, it’s fun to hit the highway, open things up and really get after it to see what’s underneath the hood and make that engine work. 

But, unless you keep up with the regular maintenance on the tires, engine and even the minor details like oil changes, that sports car won’t sprint to top speed for too long.

Your body is the same way. When you design a rest day in your workout programming, it means actually resting to help your body recover after beating yourself up in the gym.

Jumping right back on the highway, pushing the pedal to the metal and tearing tread with high intensity activities like spinning or HIIT-style workouts is a quick way to burnout.

Last time, we talked about how much you should work out in order to get the most benefit for your weight loss journey. And the major takeaway from that article was about doing only what is necessary, enjoyable and what fits conveniently in your lifestyle and schedule.

Sure, that’s rather vague. But that’s because there is no cookie-cutter version that fits everyone trying to lose weight. It’s up to you to determine how often you should train.

But there is one thing that is an absolute one size fits all strategy when it comes to training. And that’s making sure you take a rest day from working out at least once per week.

As with just about everything that I preach on this site, from nutrition to training, the goal is to get away from this “Go big or go home,” mindset. You do not have to punish yourself with grueling workouts every single day of the week until you can barely walk because you’re wasted from the leg day and constantly running back and forth between your spin classes.

It’s too much. The importance of a rest day is crucial to your fat loss progress. 

Here’s what I’m going to cover in this article:

• What is a rest day?
• Why taking a rest day is so important;
• How to take a rest day from working out;
• How often you should take a rest day;
• What you can (and should) do on your rest day; A few options you can incorporate into your rest day right now.

Let’s get into it.

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What is a rest day?

Simply put: It’s a day off from the intense training sessions.

If you are consistently hitting the weights hard several days per week, your body and muscles and mind need a day of recovery so you come back and hit those weights hard again. 

I see a lot of people buy into this mindset that unless they’re sore and miserable all week long from crushing workouts, sweaty cardio and overly-restrictive diets, then the fat loss will never happen.

This is simply not sustainable, yet it is quite common.

Oftentimes I see the trainees that are addicted to chronic exercise. They develop this idea that if they take one day off from working out, they’ll immediately pack on 10 pounds overnight. 

This creates a very poor relationship with movement. And it can lead to a very poor relationship with food. None of this is healthy in the long-term.

As a result, the chronic exerciser is taking a rest day and turning it into a recovery day. And that recovery day looks more like the other six days of the week with punishing workouts. At this point, it’s less about recovery and more out of fear of missing out on results.

It’s at this point where you’ll need to ask yourself (and be 100-percent honest): “Does this [insert X workout] actually help me recover? OR am I just afraid of not doing something because I think it’ll hinder my results?”

Rest days can look pretty different from person to person, but all should carry a similar theme: it’s all about allowing your body ample time to recover so you are refreshed for your next workout cycle.

You see, strength training and taxing your muscles is a stressor, not unlike the type of stress you experience at work or from your whiny kids. Sure, the physical stress you deliver is much better for you in the long run, but it is a stressor nonetheless.

A few key points:

• Lifting weights creates micro-tears in your muscles. You’re breaking down that lean tissue, which allows it to then get stronger and grow bigger. But all of this repairing, strengthening and growing happens at rest. If you don’t take adequate rest from your workouts, the muscles don’t have the time to adequately repair, recover and grow.
• When strength training, it can take up to 14 days for your muscles to fully recover after a really intense session of lifting. If you aren’t giving those muscles any time to rest at all by continuously beating on them with grueling workouts, it sets you up for stalling out on progress. 
• Your metabolic rate is increased for the 24 to 36 hours following a heavy lifting session. I’m emphasizing the lifting session, because the spin class does not affect your metabolism the same way a nice day of deadlifting can.

Why a day off from working out is so important

You need to rest in order to get stronger. It’s a big reason why you must take the time to prioritize sleep as part of your overall healthy lifestyle approach. I don’t care if your goal is to maintain your weight, lose fat or build more muscle, the body needs adequate rest in order to get function optimally.

It’s during this break from the lifting and sweating and muscle-taxing movements where your body actually makes progress. You break things down during training, and your body builds it back up at rest.

But if you prevent your body from taking those regular breaks, you prevent meaningful progress from taking shape. Here are a few keys to understanding if you are in sore need of a rest and recovery day:

• If you can’t remember the last day you took off from some intense, hardcore sweating and movement, you need a rest day.
• Or perhaps you’re mentally dragging a bit, especially at just the thought of performing another workout and you’re finding it unusually hard to get motivated to hit the gym, it’s probably time to take a rest day from working out.
• Likewise, if your workouts have been suffering lately and you’re not lifting, moving or feeling as motivated lately, you’re probably ready for a day off.

All of this is relative, though. I’m all for listening to the body and really processing the feedback in order to make an informed decision, rather than just pushing through because the program says four days per week, or because you’re on some arbitrary plan to take #NoRestDays or some other bullshit.

And then there’s the importance of listening to your body versus giving in to bad behavioral cues. Sometimes, especially if you’re just starting out on this fitness journey or you’ve been struggling to see some results lately, you might just not have the desire to train. 

You might be totally okay to hit the weights, but aren’t feeling it. In which case, “I should take a break whenever my body is telling me to rest,” eventually morphs into “This is a get out of working out free card.” 

Suddenly that get out of jail free card becomes a fallback on those days when work or the kids kick your ass and you’d rather catch up with Stranger Things on Netflix. You’ve convinced yourself that you need a rest day. In reality, you just want one.

In those situations, it’s important to avoid just skipping workouts because you’re lacking motivation and it might be time to grit the fuck up and go lift heavy shit.

Take a minute to read all about motivation and how it’s overrated for this whole weight loss journey and why you need to build momentum instead. If there’s one additional article that you read on my site, it should be this one.

How to take a rest day

The first step to ensuring proper recovery starts with a daily ritual: sleep. If you are constantly burning the midnight oil and trying to promote some nonstop lifestyle habit of never getting a solid night of shuteye, you are screwing up the potential for progress.

Prioritize sleep on a nightly basis. It’s at sleep when your metabolism kicks into overdrive and fat loss (or muscle building) really takes hold.

Once sleep needs are met on a consistent basis, it’s time to talk about really taking the proper amount of rest days every single week to bolster your training.

In a perfect world, we’d be able to bring our A-game every time we step foot into the gym. As a result, you’d get stronger with each and every single workout you perform. Your lifts would increase with each set and by about 10 years of solid training, you’d be pumping out 1,000 pounds of weight on your bench press and squats.

But that is not how it goes. 

You cannot crush every single training session. It’s impossible to set a personal record (or PR) every time you step foot into that CrossFit Box or OrangeTheory Fitness studio. There is no way you’ll run faster or cycle hard or perform more burpees every single time you hit the HIIT class.

Instead, your body works in cycles. Cycles of variable intensity. And in order to be at its peak, your body also needs to rest and recover in order to be fresh for the next round of training.

It’s important to take a look at how to get into the ebbs and flows of training and intensity by establishing various peak days throughout your week.

Moving days –– This is when you are doing something that is not an actual workout. A good example is a hike with the family or a playing a sport with friends. It’s purposeful movement, but it is not part of your training programming.

Workout days –– Self-explanatory, but these are the days you are going to perform one of your programmed workouts. You will approach these sessions with the intention of performing each rep with optimal form and being sure to pay attention to your body’s cues on certain movements. You might feel the drive to push a little bit in those opening compound movements, or perhaps have a little extra gas in the tank for a workout finisher. Awesome. The vast majority of your training will look like this day, though.

Intensity days –– You have some extra pep in your step. Perhaps it’s the extra coffee you had. Maybe you got some extra sleep. Either way, you feel like you could crush Thanos in a head-to-head match and you’re ready to pick up some really heavy shit and thrash your workout like the Hulk.

Rest and recovery days –– Do nothing. Do nothing in the gym. Let your body take a break from the physical and psychological rigors of intense training. I will add a small caveat that I don’t want you to do absolutely nothing. You should still aim to walk, stretch and avoid sitting on your ass like a hermit. 

Understand that even with the rest and recovery, you will still have shitty workouts and you’ll feel sluggish and weak. It happens. This is life. In fact, you can (and should) expect to see that kind of a drop-off about once every four or five training sessions. It’s all part of the game.

But the rest and recovery practices that you’ll pick up from this piece will hopefully limit those less-than-awesome sessions to the minimum.

You’ve got the gist of this stuff, awesome. So now let’s talk about how often you should be taking a break with a rest and recovery day.

How often should you take a rest day from working out

At minimum, this should be at least one day per week. For everyone. No matter the goal, no matter how hard your train. No matter the level of experience. You need at least one full day of rest and recovery. 

After that, this once again becomes an individualistic situation. And it starts with your nutrition. If your macros and calories are in a good place and regularly on point, you can probably get away with fewer rest days per week.

But the sweet spot for rest days is about one day off for every three to five days of training. 

Again this is totally up to you, your goals and your programming:

If you are training in a three-day workout split (training just three days per week) and really hitting the weights hard when you lift, it means three days of workouts and four days of rest and recovery.

For the trainees that are going with a four or five day split (I don’t recommend more than five days for most peeps, by the way), obviously the amount of rest and recovery days are fewer.

By that same token, if your level of intensity is rather lower than someone crushing deadlifts and heavy barbell squats, you could get away with fewer rest days, too.

If your nutrition is not on point, and you’re not prioritizing enough calories, adequate protein or missing key nutrient-dense foods in favor of mostly processed junk, you will feel like shit and your workouts will be shit. Therefore, you’ll likely feel like you need a rest day more often than you truly need one.

While on the flip side, if you are focusing your daily diet on nutrient-dense foods, slamming plenty of protein for your goals and nailing your calories, you can afford to take fewer rest days.

My online coaching clients have varying rest days depending on the goal and the program. All of my programming begins with a blank sheet of paper and I fully customize the workouts (and rest days) based on a clients goals and lifestyle and schedule.

From there, it’s up to the client to execute the plan I’ve delivered, which is created for specific reasons. It’s not a good idea for that client to then go through and add extra workouts for one reason or another. 

Trust your program and trust the process. And when the program says it’s time to take a rest day, that means it’s time to take a rest day and not get crazy with some 60-minute bootcamp class.

Things you can do on your day off from the gym

I am a firm believer that you should aim to perform some kind of purposeful movement every single day of the week. It’ll do your body good to get up and move with a variety of activities. It keeps you fresh, young and healthy.

The movement you do on this day triggers the circulation of blood and nutrients to your muscles. 

The problem is that “daily purposeful movement” can be misconstrued and end up convincing you that it’s all about punishing yourself with grueling slogs of sweat every single day. That is not what I’m saying here.

Your rest day should be just that … a day of rest from the intensity. But, it should not be a day of sitting on your ass eating a bunch of popcorn and taking that well-earned increase in metabolic rate down to a minimum.

As I’ve pointed out before, your metabolism is bolstered and powered by a number of factors. The activity burned in the gym is only a small portion of that calorie burn. 

Your NEAT calories the non-purposeful movement (things like fidgeting) can end up accounting for almost 20-percent of your total daily calorie burn.

The best way to manipulate NEAT calories is to get up and walk. Yes, walk. Walking is a purposeful movement and should be done every single day. Especially on that rest day.

But in addition to the steps you take, you can add a few more activities to your rest day and make it more of a recovery or better yet, active recovery day.

Aim for a few minutes of the following on those rest days:

• Mobility, flexibility, yoga
• Foam roll (or some kind of soft tissue release)
• Get a massage (if you’ve got that kinda cash flow)
• Walking –– gets the blood circulating to the muscles
• Playing a sport (non-contact, preferably not too intense)
• Dance
• Sex –– yes, this is an activity (I will die on this hill)

Remember, the activities that you choose to perform on your rest day must not be so intense that they interfere with your regular workouts.

Running a 5K on your day off is not “active” recovery. That’s just a full blown workout day.

We’re looking for just enough movement to keep your metabolism running optimally and to avoid drifting into couch potato status. 

Stop looking at your workout plan as a punishment. Exercise and movement is a part of your daily routine to look and feel amazing. It’s not a lifetime sentence because you ate too many slices of pizza.⠀

Remember this is a lifestyle. Like … for life. There are no quick fixes. So that extra spin class didn’t get you extra closer to your goal, it just got you one step closer to breaking down your body.⠀

Take care of your body and it will respond in kind to make sure you’re on reaching your goals. That includes treating your body to a day of rest at least once per week.

Feature Image by Maciej Karoń on Unsplash

Let me help you learn when and how to take a rest day from working out … 

I’m here to help you out. 

If you have any questions, reach out. I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “Take a rest day from working out” and I’ll answer any questions you have to make this work for you.

Or you can hit me up anytime on the socialz on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

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