When you exercise, or lift weights it is important to give your body enough time to recover after each session. It might be that you’re trying to push the body past what you’ve known it can do before be it lifting heavier weight or running further. You might be trying to maintain a level of fitness. In any instance, you need to make sure that you’ve taken the right amount of time for rest and recovery. It’s a very important part of any exercise regime, but a lot of people don’t seem to realise the true importance of rest and recovery. To try and make sure that people are fully aware of the importance of rest and recovery, we’re going to look into it now.
Rest And Recovery – What Happens?
Before we begin, it is important to understand that there are two different types of recovery. These are known as short-term recovery and long-term recovery, and they both play a role in the healing process.
Short-term recovery is the time immediately after you’ve been exercising, and is often known as a cool down period. It’s often known as active recovery because it involves doing low-intensity exercise. This could be going for a walk for example. This part of recovery has a wealth of benefits attached to it. It replenishes the energy stores of the body and often requires input from you. When you eat and drink after exercise, you’re replacing fluids lost during the workout you’ve done. You’re also repairing and rejuvenating your muscles through nutrition, as well as optimising the amount of protein that you’re ingesting into the system for muscle repair. As you may know, protein is a very important part of everybody’s diet especially if your goal it to build muscle or aid in the recovery process after exercise.
Long-term recovery is something a bit different, but it’s just as important for rest and recovery. Long-term involves things like recovery days, where you don’t exercise at all and have rest days. It also refers to making sure that you’re not overtaxing one part of your body, and that sometimes involves swapping out one exercise for another or training different body parts foe example legs on Monday and chest on Tuesday with a rest day on Wednesday. A lot of long-term recoveries is making sure that you give yourself adequate time in between exercising to recover and avoid injury and fatigue.
Overall, there’s a real importance to rest and recovery and should be factored into any training plan. We’re not superhumans. We all need time to rest and recuperate in between exercises because the body can only handle so much pressure. It’s important to remember that when you’re going about your daily routine. without rest and recovery you have more risk of fatigue and injury. Always try to factor in some rest days in your training week and your body will thank you.