How To Use Rest To Optimize Your Gains

As we’re grinding it out - we often fail to appreciate the importance of rest on helping us perform our best - physically and mentally. 

When it comes to muscle growth in particular, rest is fundamental. It helps our muscles recover, repair, grow and helps us make progress with our fitness objectives. 

Why is rest so important?

When working out, your muscles suffer small ruptures (micro-tears). When you give your body the means to repair these tears, your muscles grow (this muscle growth phenomenon is known as hypertrophy).

The muscle grows when we’re resting and not when we’re exercising, since it’s resting that allows your body to replenish energy stores, remove metabolic byproducts (everything you don’t need, like lactic acid), and start the repair and growth of muscle tissue.

Beyond the physical advantages, rest also offers psychological benefits. 

Our day-to-day routine is often packed with mental fatigue and ever-changing cycles of motivation. Exercise is similar in that way.

Rest, in both of these scenarios, provides an exceptional opportunity to recharge mentally, keep our enthusiasm high and reduce our stress levels.

So, rest offers a handful of benefits, but…

What happens if you exercise and don’t rest properly?

Aside from missing out on all the benefits it offers, neglecting rest can lead to overtraining - a state where your body is pushed beyond its capacity to recover. 

If you ever get to this point, you’ll feel constantly tired, your performance will drop, you’ll be more likely to get injured and chances of being depressed and anxious also increase.

If you want to perform at your peak, we can’t let this happen. 

Aside from these consequences, overtraining undermines muscle gain and can derail your fitness goals without you even noticing.

Pay special attention to your workout’s intensity and make sure to incorporate adequate rest periods to continuously make progress and reduce the risk of burnout.

Now you might be wondering how you can do this:

How to rest properly?

Rest can be divided into multiple components:

1. Sleep

By far, one of the most important. During sleep, our body produces more proteins and a special type of hormone known as “growth hormone”. Both these components are absolutely crucial for muscle growth and repair. A poor night’s sleep will result in missing out on this protein and hormone boost - hurting your progress.

2. Rest Days

Make sure you have scheduled rest days to promote recovery. These are days when you should avoid high-intensity exercise to prevent overtraining and allow your muscles to recover, replenish energy stores, and grow.

If you want help with planning a workout routine - this article we wrote on the optimal workout splits is a good place to start.

3. Active Recovery

Rest days don’t mean that we don’t move. 

Active recovery, such as light stretching, yoga, or leisurely walking, should be part of your rest day routine. It’ll help your blood flow to your muscles, which will remove any products you don’t need - like lactic acid - and deliver all the nutrients you need to recover - like proteins. 

Including active recovery days in your routine will not only boost your gains, as it’ll help you burn more calories, relax and deliver the amazing benefits of being active (such as better sleep quality and reduced stress).

4. Rest During Workouts 

Rest is fundamental even on high-intensity days. No one can keep up at a high pace for a long period of time. 

There are three variables to think about:

1. Implementing strategic rest periods within your workouts, such as short rest intervals between sets, is fundamental to ensure you can perform at your peak. 
2. The intensity of your workouts will also determine the level of rest that you should have. An approach to manage this is by using RPE - Rate of Perceived Exertion. More on that here. 
3. Save time and still get the required rest by leveraging a technique known as supersets, tri-sets and giant sets. This is when you perform exercises back to back from opposing muscle groups. For example, bench press (that primarily focuses on the chest) and pull ups (that primarily focuses on your back). This means that while you’re working on your chest, your back is resting and vice versa. 

Getting the appropriate rest time can be tricky. If you’d like the help of professionals on this topic, book a quick free call with one of our certified coaches here.

5. Rest Between Workouts

Depending on your training routine, you may have workouts where the same muscle groups are targeted. This will result in accumulated fatigue and higher risk of injuries if not well planned. 

Every time this happens, allow your body a 48 to 72h of rest before going back to the same muscle group. As an example, if you ran 6 miles (around 10 Km) on Monday morning, avoid jumping right into a lower-body workout on Tuesday.

Wrapping up:

Rest is a fundamental aspect of muscle growth that should not be underestimated. 

Incorporating sufficient sleep, active rest days, and strategic rest periods into your fitness routine can significantly enhance muscle recovery and growth. 

By recognizing and respecting the importance of rest, you’ll not only boost your physical results, as you’ll improve overall performance and mental availability during work and family time.

If you want to boost your results and enhance your performance, our certified team would be glad to help you on your way. Book your free consulting call today and let’s crush these goals together!