How many rest days should I take

By far one of the most common questions when it comes to exercise is, "how many rest days should I take?"

By God, I wish I could answer this question accurately and tell everyone how many rest days they actually needed. But I simply cannot. Recovery is very complex, and there are a myriad of factors outside of simply the stress of training that affect one's recovery. Stress is stress. Whether it is work stress, family stress, relationship stress, training stress, it's all stress

Not only will recovery demands vary between different individuals, it will also vary within the same individual across one's lifespan. Some weeks you may need one rest day, some weeks you may need three rest days, and sometimes you may need an entire week of rest.

Not only do the different stressors I mentioned affect your recovery, but so do actual recovery parameters such as the quality and quantity of your sleep and nutrition.

As you can tell, I would be way out of my scope of practice to tell anyone how many rest days you NEEDED per week. So, I defer the question to the fixations about autoregulation. Autoregulation is simply just a tool for you to attempt to determine the optimal ratio of workdays to rest days given all the nuances of your day to day life.

There are a few great ways to try and determine whether or not you are "overtraining,” and whether or not you need more or less rest days.

In the case of a weight loss diet, it becomes much more difficult to determine sufficient recovery because you cannot rely on performance parameters to demonstrate you are properly recovering and progressing. With that being said, you can use Fitness wearables that track heart rate, sleep mattress, and heart rate variability to determine your overall rest and recovery.

If we are losing weight, it is very likely that we are becoming more cardiovascularly fit. Therefore, our heart rate will typically decrease as we get healthier and lose excess body fat because we are increasing our cardiovascular fitness at the as we lose weight. If heart rate metrics on your chosen fitness wearable device are telling you that your heart rate has suddenly begun to increase , either at rest or during your workout, it is very likely you may be in the state of insufficient recovery.

Heart rate variability is the inverse of heart rate.in terms of what you should be on the lookout for. Heart rate variability should increase as we get healthier. But in a state of high stress and under recovery heart rate variability will lower.

So, if your heart rate variability metrics begin to decline, it is a strong indicator you need either more recovery, less stress, or both.

The final metric I like to look at is sleep. In a state of high stress, sleep may not be as deep and restorative. If you have too much stress and not enough recovery, you may begin to get less deep sleep, or less overall sleep, even though you are spending the same time in bed. With that being said, if you end every day by practically falling asleep on the toilet this may also be indicative of too much accumulated stress over the day. The final metric would be simply how difficult it is for you to wake up in the morning. If you feel less energetic than usual, or require more stimulants to wake up in the morning, then stress accumulation is likely becoming to great for you to fully recover. .

In all of these scenarios, the first step I would typically take is to try and address the stress that is causing insufficient recovery. If you have mitigated stress as much as you reasonably can, but are still experiencing symptoms that align with improper recovery, then the next step would be to implement more rest days. If this strategy does not help with recovery, you may then want to consider taking a period of time either completely off of the gym, or in a phase of training referred to as a deload phase, in which you reduce the volume, and intensity of all of your workouts such that they do not impose much, if any, additional stress. Then, continue to assess all of the variables that would indicate proper recovery. You may very well find the sweet spot of work to rest days by simply monitoring how you feel energetically every day, and entering every workout. But, the more quantitative metrics such as heart rate, sleep, and heart rate variability can be used to assure you are not overlooking the state of under recovery that may be deleterious in the future.

So, when someone comes to me asking how many rest days per week they should be taking, and is expecting a number as a response, I simply just say I do not know because there are so many inter-individual variations and factors that alter every individual's recovery needs.

And to think, we haven't even spoken about the different types of training, different experience levels, and different intensity of training!