Rest Day: Needed for training regimen?
Did you know, taking recovery breaks in between workout days may result in greater fitness results. As you may already know when you are working out (strength training) your muscles fibers are being torn and broken apart. So after the workout, your body repairs or replaces damaged muscle fibers through a cellular process where it fuses muscle fibers together to form new muscle protein strands or myofibrils. These repaired myofibrils increase in size and in numbers in order to create growth (hypertrophy). However, muscle growth occurs whenever the rate of muscle protein synthesis is greater than the rate of muscle protein breakdown. Because this adaptation occurs after you workout usually lasting anywhere from 24 to 48 hours to repair and rebuild, and working those muscles again too soon simply leads to tissue breakdown instead of building. So now you know, “Recovery Day” is a critical part of “the-process-to-progress”, regardless of your fitness level or sport. Otherwise, skipping rest days can lead to over-training or burnout.
