If you are like me, skipping your workouts feels terrible. I kind of get down on myself and feel like a lazy bum, whenever I miss my workout. Even if I haven’t missed one for few months I still feel terrible. Yet, the best thing you can do sometimes is to skip not only one workout, but many in the row.
This used to be very challenging for me, but now I am very comfortable with it. I intentionally place 2 week brakes 2 times per year when I don’t exercise at all. And include regular days off in my monthly work out plans. Sometimes it is few days in a row. The result of frequent days off from working out is much my better overall performance.
I just had my 4 day brake from exercise. Instead of being depressed about missed workouts I just relaxed and knew, that when I hit the gym next I am going to feel great. And that exactly happened. Even my sleep deprived body, yes I don’t sleep much these days, felt amazing and I was able to increase weights in all of my exercises. I felt incredibly strong.
Your body needs frequent brakes
Especially if you are very consistent and you are trying to improve even further, you need to let your body to heal. Your body needs it. It’s necessary. With intensive exercise, lifting heavy weights, running, jumping and sprinting, you are damaging your body. You are damaging it in a good way, so it can rebuild itself even stronger. But for that to happen, you need to give it a break. And sometimes 1 day is not enough.
When to take a brake from exercise
I am not talking here about those people, that exercise semi regularly. If you work out 2 – 3 times per week, you are certainly having enough brakes. And you don’t need more. This message is mainly for those, that are almost obsessed with their exercise. The ones, that get crazy, when they don’t do it for the day. They need these breaks like salt. I am one of them. And I can tell you, that learning how to take longer brakes from exercise was the most important part in my performance advancement.
I have a golden rule to have 2 two week periods over the year to not lift weights, not run, just to have fun. I will only do activities that are fun for me like surfing, playing soccer, playing ping pong, go for bike rides, skating, hiking and so on. In this period I don’t even want to get close to the gym if possible. When I see a dumbbell, I am ready to throw up on it. I hate it these two weeks. And I will not touch it.
Sometimes, surfing, playing soccer, tennis and mountain biking can get very intensive. And when that happens, and I still have a lot of fun with it, I will extend my time off from gym workouts to 3 weeks or even a month.
Listen to you body
The other day, when I got up and went to work I noticed that climbing those first 2 flights of stars I have in front of my apartment to reach the street level caused me a minor pain in my knee. The bell ringed in my head. Time for some resting time. Later on that same day, when I was ready to do my legs workout, I purposely canceled it and just stretched little bit without lifting anything. Few days later I climbed those same 2 flights of stairs early in the morning with no pain and with an incredible ease. My microscopic injury was healed. I was ready for another intensive leg workout.
Do you listen to your body? Do you stop and take a brake when little pain appears. Or are you ambitiously going through the pain and keep working out. If you do keep going through the pain, you could be doing some more damage to your connective tissue. And instead of suffering in the gym, you should take a brake and go to a Symphony, or a rock concert instead.
Why you need at least 2 weeks?
Those regular 1, 2 or occasional 3 days off, in your week are not enough to heal your joints from all that heavy lifting. I find minimum of 2 weeks being the time your body needs to a complete recovery. The kind of recovery, that your body will be at it’s best and all the microscopic tears in your tendons, muscles and all connective tissues will be healed.
It is like a marathon runner after a grueling preparation for a year slowly easing down and doing very little before New York city marathon. She wants to be at her best on the start and she wants her body to be completely healed and ready for the most important race of the season.
Long brakes and mental recovery
Your brain needs change in habit sometimes. It needs brake from intensive, challenging routine. Switching of for 2 weeks and doing only fun activities without thinking about something you have to do rejuvenates your brain. Motivation increases. Happiness raises. And you will be ready to hit the gym or running track with new enthusiasm.
Work smart not hard
When I talked to my former rowing teammate Vaso, who is been coaching rowing at several prestigious US universities and has some huge successes with Stanford and Columbia university, I asked him what was the number 1 thing we did wrong when we were competitive athletes. His answer was very short. He said: we didn’t get enough rest.
When I think about my 15 years of competitive rowing career, all that comes to my mind was a lot of pain. We would train to the maximum every day. Missing a workout wasn’t an option. And if something did hurt, we pushed it trough and finished grueling workout anyway. If we didn’t, we would be depressed, for failing. We would think of how much we will miss it at our important races.
How much different it would have been to just practice a little smarter. Our bodies would be more rested, we would enjoy our workouts much more and win more races. Instead we suffered and didn’t perform as well as we could. And that’s only because we didn’t rest enough. It doesn’t get any easier to fix the problem. Anyway, don’t make the same mistake. Rest when you need. Rest more. You will feel better. You will perform better. And your workouts will be much more enjoyable. So yes go ahead and skip your workout for today and for tomorrow and maybe for the rest of the week.
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