For most people, doing exercise is a pain. Why do people sweat out and torture themselves with long runs, painful weights and boring cardio when they can just sit down and relax. I am one of those junkies who cannot stop exercising – though my physical appearance does not reflect the type of exercises that I do. To be honest, exercise does not translate to a physically fit body – there are more factors to it!
Anyway – for junkies like me, the problem has always been trying to get myself to rest. Resting in fact, as food – is a key aspect in ensuring that your body continue to function well. Rest can mean different things, but to my limited knowledge, rests are:
1) Good sleep
2) Rest day
Good sleep – is not only about 8 hours sleep, but its about good quality sleep. I.e. one will need to sleep at least X amount of hours + it needs to be a quality one too. Don’t expect having to have a good rest if you sleep 8 hours, and half the time you are waking up because the bed is too hard, or the pillow is too high. I usually don’t get decent sleep because I tend to watch TV before I sleep. Though its great to get me to sleep, I always forget to set the sleep mode, causing the TV show to run all the way to the morning. Yes – apart from the waste of electricity, the sound from the TV will indirectly cause me not to sleep well. A good sleep is the type that when you wake up – you feel refreshed! **haven’t got that in a long while!**
Rest day – is a day where you don’t actually work out. My personal problem is that I don’t let my body to rest. I workout generally about 2 hours a day without fail. And this happens daily from Monday to Sunday. So lately, I’ve been pushing myself to rest more. Getting about 1 rest day every 6 days – at least. Not very successful, but have to start somewhere. Rest day is very important so that our body can rebuild the muscles. This will also ensure that we don’t push so much that our muscles gets weaker and weaker – causing risk of injury to go up. The question really now – does light workout constitute to rest day? Say a 30 mins easy swim – something that we can relax? Heart rate around 100-110 bpm? To me its fine. But to some people its not. Well – at the end of the day, know your body! And you will be ok 🙂