Why Do You Need a Rest Day
Training involves progressive overload, gradually increasing the stress on the body during training (distance, duration, intensity). However you can’t just keep increasing stress. Training hard for more than a few consecutive days increases the risk of overtraining and injury.
Signs you may be training too much include:
1. Feeling tired and heavy legged after a rest days.
2. Your sleep pattern is disturbed.
3. Training is not going well (decreased performance)
4. You lack your usual motivation to train
5. Your technology (Whoop, Oura ring, watch) show a drop off in your recovery score and/or decreased heart rate variability and increased resting heart rate.
Rest and recovery days allow for adaptation to an increasing training load, resulting in increased strength, with adaptations seen in the musculoskeletal and cardiovascular systems.
What is a Rest or Recovery Day?
First you need a definition of day. Is it the day of the week or 24 hour period? Some athletes can run without taking days off, but most of us need to take a physical day in order to recover. This day can be either complete rest or some lighter, active recovery such as foam rolling, stretching, walking, and non-impact, complementary activities such as swimming and cycling.
Planning Rest Days
When you are in the middle of a training cycle and focused on your goal race, it can be difficult to think about taking time off and many runners end up missing out on these days, risking injury and burnout. Listen to your body, Take time when you need it, and don’t start running again until you feel ready, not obligated, to run.
The best way to do this is to plan a day of rest once or twice a week depending on your need. If you are sick or stressed add more rest days if you need them, and after a race consider taking a full week or two away from running, to recover and re-energize.
The key to success is to balance stress with rest, in other words to train smarter not harder!