How Much Rest Does Your Body Need?

14 July 2009 | Fitness Tips

Last week I had a planned rest from doing weights, I do this every eight weeks so that I give my body time to recover from all the weights that I do in a normal week. I believe this process of working out for a given time period, then taking a week or two off is called periodisation or having a training cycle.

During this week off, I come off the creatine, drop the protein and calories a bit and just do some lighter CV work, generally I’m not as active as I would normally be. Last week was no exception, I did a few gentle three/four mile runs, just steady state cardio, no weight training at all. The only problem is, I still feel exhausted this week and wonder if I should have another week off from doing weights.

My real quandry though is that I did have a heavy weekend, going out both Friday and Saturday night, and wonder maybe if as much as I did need time off to rest, because I’ve had a large weekend, all the good rest that I got last week has been spoiled.

Which leads me into a few trains of thought, firstly, should I really be indulging in two nights of fun and games at the weekend, especially as I am approaching thirty years of age and can clearly not cope as well as I used to when I was 10 years younger. And secondly, had I not gone out on the weekend, would I still be feeling so exhausted now? I have been training very consistently since early November last year, it’s now July, so that’s over eight months of training consistently without any holidays, except for my planned rest weeks during the first week in March and the first week in May.

Perhaps regardless of my weekend activity I would still be feeling tired now and so should I listen to my body and take the rest of this week off from weights, have a restful weekend without any booze and feel fully recovered to start training hard again next week.

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5 Responses to “How Much Rest Does Your Body Need?”

  • 1 John Says:
    July 16th, 2009 saat: 2:58 pm

    No it’s not called periodisation, it’s called being lazy ;-)

    Man up, keep at it and SQUAT!

  • 2 Dan Says:
    July 17th, 2009 saat: 8:09 am

    Why should he take a dump? ;-)

  • 3 John Says:
    July 21st, 2009 saat: 7:56 pm

    Well if he doesn’t “take a dump” heavy squatting could get messy… ;-p

  • 4 Paul W Says:
    July 23rd, 2009 saat: 10:50 am

    I understand what you mean here, I have spent the last few days sleeping 11 hours and cannot get up to train. I am guessing that this is from the end of a hard school year and living with my gf’s 4 year old daughter! Either way, all I am going to do is ease back into it. When I am ready, not before!

  • 5 Mr Jones Says:
    July 27th, 2009 saat: 2:14 pm

    I do alot of weights myself, I also find that having the break helps growth alot.

    I generally have a week off every month, when im on a week off I stop all weight gainers/proteins and dont do any training at all. So being lazy like John says.

    The week im back in the gym I find im alot bigger,stronger and perform alot better than the previous 8 weeks.

    Each to their own and everyones body is different.

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