Fitness – Time To Rest

If you are a fitness buff or you are just considering making a New Year’s resolution, then you are interested in results, progress, and success with your fitness goals. Part and parcel of doing so is having the forethought to plan for your recovery. That means a regular eight hours of sleep a night. It also means that once or twice a year you should take some time off from working out altogether. It is important to allow your body to rest completely from the strain of your workouts.

When you take this time off you are allowing your joints, tendons, and muscles time to truly recuperate from the stress you apply to your body from working out. This rest time also has the added benefit of helping bust through plateaus, as your body is revitalized to hit higher goals.

How much time you take off may vary for everyone, but somewhere in the area of two to three weeks is a good time frame. You can take that all at once or split it up into two pieces (maybe two weeks during the summer and a week at Christmas). Try to make it coincide with holidays or busy social times to make it more convenient all around.

So when you design your fitness workout routine, think in terms of what you do weekly. Once that is designed, plan on keeping that routine in place for 3 months. Then prepare on changing your routine completely every three months or so. Then work in the time that you will take off in between these three month periods. The best fitness workout plan would be designed to use each 3 month routine to hit specific goals in strength, speed, and physical appearance whatever your personal goals might be.

Measure your success at the end of this 3 month fitness workout routine, adjust your goals for the next workout plan, and start striving towards these new personal bests. As you can see, as each new 3 month period is a new start of sorts, it is the perfect time to rest in between these two timeframes.

For those of you who are just starting to commit to a new fitness lifestyle the idea of scheduled time off may sound great. But I can tell you as a fitness buff myself, once the results start to come and your motivation starts to get the better of you, taking time off will be a hard thing to do. It may sound kind of crazy to newbies, but fitness can be an addictive thing when it gets a hold of you, so you may have to force yourself to gear down.

Post Author: Violet

Violet Rae Murphy: Violet, a biotech analyst, covers advances in health technology, biotech innovations, and the future of personalized medicine.