How Important are Rest Days?
What would happen if someone worked out vigorously everyday, week after week, for months? The answer is grim: they would soon suffer an overuse injury such as a pulled muscle, strained ligament, or worse. Universities are seeing more incidences of joint pain that can only be treated by skilled chiropractors. Rest days not only give your body time to recover, they also help balance your body on a biochemical level. This is why it is important to have rest days. Without them you won’t be working out for long.
Bigger Muscles from Not Working Out?
Athletes are known for having a fitness addiction with one major problem: if they don’t rest they will injure themselves by overtraining. Localized overtraining is common and occurs when someone works out the same muscle group so much that strength and development are compromised. Cryotherapy is an immediate benefit for localized overtraining because of its inflammation reducing effects, even after a single session.¹ Systemic overtraining is much more pronounced. Not only does it include the injury-prone hallmarks of localized overtraining, it harms the human body on a biochemical level. Many college athletes are at risk due to their lack of experience and a constant fear of not making the team. Decreased performance, injuries that do not heal, and lingering colds or infections are warning signs to athletic directors that students are overtraining. But it doesn’t stop there: higher resting heart rates, constant fatigue, poor sleeping patterns, and a loss of concentration add to the debilitating condition.
The Throwdown - Anabolic vs Catabolic State
Throughout the day our bodies are in one of two states: anabolic or catabolic. The words both build on the Greek verb for “throw” (bállō). Anabolic adds the prefix “ana” for “up” and describes the state of growing or advancing. This is the state that healthy exercise and rest uses to build muscle, strength, and overall wellness. Catabolic adds the Greek prefix “kata” for down and describes the opposite: degeneration of our bodies and moods. Everyone experiences both of these states everyday; people who do not use rest days are in danger of remaining in a catabolic state so long that they begin wasting away. Catabolism results in skeletal muscle atrophy and increasing levels of cortisol and a negative nitrogen balance. Cortisol is a natural hormone produced by the adrenal cortex in response to stressful situations. Too much cortisol can slow down muscular repair, lower testosterone, and eventually block protein synthesis.² Adding insult to injury it also slows the body’s ability to burn fat for energy. Result: you work out more than your friends but become weaker and fatter.
Work Smarter, Not Harder
How do celebrity fitness trainers maintain their amazing figures? They rest, and then workout. Jillian Michaels recommends three days off and four days of workout. The four days are grouped into push and pull routines so no muscle group is worked more than twice per week.³ For Michaels the rest days are also designed to rejuvenate mentally and spiritually. People who overtrain also push too hard in other areas of their life. Mandating rest days is a reminder to take it easy on your body and mind. The science backs her: overtraining results in raised cortisol levels that are directly correlated with tension, depression, anger, vigor, and fatigue.⁴
Chiropractic Joint Pain
Severe joint pain (such as in overuse injuries) is such a problem that it can sideline an athlete for months. Athletic directors and trainers have noticed that more and more young athletes are using chiropractors to help with joint pain. This is not due to a sudden new discovery with chiropractic science; instead, it is due to young athletes not being taught how to properly rest. Because of this there has been a two prong approach: proper education about rest and whole body cryotherapy. Schools such as Clemson use cryotherapy to ensure that their athletes are able to train hard without incurring injuries. Cryotherapy does not replace rest days, but it does reduce inflammation and protect against overuse injuries such as rotator cuff problems or pulled muscles.
Founded on facts: for peer-reviewed articles, scholarly journals, and articles cited above please see the below sources.
Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports: One Session of Partial-Body Cryotherapy improves muscle damage recovery. https://doi.org/10.1111/sms.12353
Rest and Overtraining: https://www.bodybuilding.com/content/rest-and-overtraining-what-does-this-mean-to-bodybuilders.html
Jillian Michaels and rest days https://www.insider.com/how-many-times-to-work-out-per-week-2017-10
Mood state and salivary cortisol levels following overtraining in female swimmers. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2813655