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Rest Days

kaz

kaz

iLift
Just interested to see what people regard as a "Rest Day"

Do you still complete some sort of mild exercise or do you declare rest days as an "Exercise Free" Day?

Me personally, a rest day includes a 3.5km walk, no running but mostly incline walking, but absolutely no weights.
 
Rest day for me = stretching / foam rolling in front of the TV with bourbon / diet coke. No exercise whatsoever.

Example, max effort squats yesterday (Wednesday), today ^ the above ^, tomorrow max effort deadlifts / overhead press.
 
Take my dog for a walk for 30-45mins up hills. Do some stretching and maybe some ab wheel rollouts and pushups. Nothing great just try to recover.
 
I do both, it just depends on how I feel. The one thing i have learned since I started lifting much heavier is to listen to my body. Sometimes I don't do anything and other times I will go walking or do some other exercise. It all depends on how I am feeling etc, but I don't lie to myself anymore, so I can take this approach, there was a time when I first started that I would say to myself 'I'm too sore, or tired' and than feel guilty about it. Now days, I don't bother lieing to myself and if I really am not up to it, I will rest without guilt as i need it.

Greame
 
I don't have rest days and as I age I think it is becoming more important for me to have a gentle cardio day, but I always try to keep moving.

My key to success is sleep.

I do however believe in holidays very much.
 
deep said:
Just interested to see what people regard as a "Rest Day"

Do you still complete some sort of mild exercise or do you declare rest days as an "Exercise Free" Day?

Me personally, a rest day includes a 3.5km walk, no running but mostly incline walking, but absolutely no weights.
Click to expand...

A rest day for me only applies to my upper body since that’s the only part that is mainly stimulated with weights. Lower body gets worked 6 days a week performing my favourite exercise of all time: stair climbing. I’ll be writing or sharing my program with the forum in the very near future regarding gradual progressive overload for cardiorespiratory training, in addition to the muscular stimulation all my lower body (from the waist down) achieves whilst performing such a wonderful mind and body stimulating type of an exercise.

So a direct answer to your question would be: Sunday is my rest day where I do not intentionally perform any physical activities.


Fadi.
 
corestrength said:
Great answers. But lets add another question. How does your nutrition change on rest days?
Click to expand...
It doesn't. This question is always asked with the premise that perhaps one's metabolism takes a dive south simply because one is taking a day or two off... it doesn't, at least it never did for me.

Let me put this into simple plain English. When I was training as an Olympic weightlifter (8x/week with only Thursday and Sunday as rest days) and consuming between 13500 and 15000 calories, I can guarantee you that the most amount of calories consumption was done on those two rest days, especially the Sunday. Did my body composition change from being at 10% bodyfat? No Sir! Did my body weight increase or decrease? No. How do I know this? It's simply, the mirror and the scale. Everyday weightlifters weigh themselves no less than twice, and the mirror... well, it's always there.

Now if you feel that your metabolism is not as fast as mine was, and that you're the type who has to force himself to eat, and once you do you get a bit bloated etc, then you would not be able to make a comparison between you and me (the way I was). Furthermore, if you don't train to the extreme twice a day and are active most of the day (where the temperature can dip to 15 below zero), then again it may not be a good idea to draw a comparison between you and the way I was.

However there is something you may be able to take home from what I've shared with you all above and that is this fact: if your level of activity/training is constant, then your metabolism will also be constant in its speed and will hold that speed over a day or two of resting, in which there should be no concern regarding the adding of fat to one's body mass.

Others may (for whatever reason) like to disagree with some or all that I've said above, and that is fine with me. As long as you do it with respect, then all is well.

I thank you for reading.


Fadi.
 
Did I read that correctly? 15,000kcal a day?

Anyway, I don't have rest days, just days I don't go to the gym.
I usually do gardening, jog, cycle, hill sprints, push a wheelbarrow full of dirt around or up my hill, interval training, that kind of stuff
 
On my rest days I take some light dumbells and do 100 reps, as per Fadi's advice, really helps because my job has gone from physical to 'sit on arse at desk'...it really feels good afterwards.
 
D1cko said:
On my rest days I take some light dumbells and do 100 reps, as per Fadi's advice, really helps because my job has gone from physical to 'sit on arse at desk'...it really feels good afterwards.
Click to expand...
Funny you mention that D1cko. I took my 10kg d/bell to work and did 100s with it. It felt great. I'm working on 1000 to see what would happen!

Take care.

PS: D1cko and I though look like we're doing the same thing, we're not. I'm actually using the reps to build, where D1cko is using them to recover (and grow indirectly) through increasing the density of his capillaries and mitochondria.


Fadi.
 
I'm interested Fadi now that you mentioned it
How do I increase my biceps by 1". The way you worded it makes it seem like you have some magic technique
 
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