Do you have an “all or nothing” mentality when it comes to your fitness? Do you struggle to take any days off when you are in the zone with your workouts? 

There are many issues with this mentality, one of the worst being the lack of rest days. Wondering why you should take rest days?

Here are five important reasons: 

1. Avoid burnout: never taking a day off from the gym can feel like the best way to stay on track, but this is a short term way of thinking. This is often why people experience burnout: because they have no balance or time off from workouts. This can cause you to go the complete opposite direction and stop working out all together. 

2. You will give your muscles time to recover and repair: When you workout, especially with weight lifting, you are tearing your muscle fibers apart just to have them rebuild stronger and more powerful. If you don’t give your body that time to repair, you will miss out on the gains! 

3. Avoid injury: When you are working out through fatigue and burnout, the risk of injury goes up drastically. You aren’t sharp mentally or physically, which can lead to costly mistakes. You are much better served to take rest days, instead of injuring yourself and having to sit out of workouts all together. 

4. You can train harder: You are able to hit workouts harder when you have time to recover between training days and feel like you aren’t quite as sore or fatigued. After a rest day, your body and mind will be refreshed and ready to rock again! 

5. Taking rest days will help you build long term habits: Rest days will leave you flexibility in your schedule. When you have a chaotic day, instead of going back to that all or nothing attitude and considering the week a wash if you can’t make it to the gym, you can adjust your workout schedule to take a rest day. That allows this to become a lifestyle change, not just a temporary change.