Rest Week: Why Taking Breaks From Exercising is Crucial

It’s the week of Thanksgiving and I know that many of you are looking forward to spending quality time with loved ones and feasting on turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. The last thing you want to think about is exercise!

But if you’re like me, the thought of skipping out on regularly scheduled workouts may bring on a sense of guilt that makes your stomach hurt more than overindulging on Thanksgiving. 

So this time each year, for as long as I can remember, my solution was to compress my workout week by exercising on back-to-back days with the goal of being done by Thanksgiving day. It’s a bit tortuous and those of you who follow this practice know exactly what I mean!

Until one day, I discovered that there are actually really important benefits to taking regular week-long breaks from exercise.  Now, I can spend Thanksgiving week with loved ones, feasting on great food, and not feeling guilty about taking a break from exercise! 

Benefits of regular week-long breaks from exercise

Over the last several years, I’ve incorporated week-long breaks from exercise roughly every six to eight weeks. I find that somewhere within this time frame, I start to notice one or more of the following:

1. Less motivation to exercise

2. More fatigued during exercise

3. A plateau in fitness gains 

4. Onset of new aches or pain

These are signals to me that a break is needed. Everyone is different, so you may notice shorter or longer time frames, as little as four weeks and as much as twelve weeks, for the onset of similar signals. 

You would think that taking a whole week off from exercise would result in a loss of fitness, right? Surprisingly, not only is this not true, if you’re pushing yourself...

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