When you exercise –

• Your muscles undergo microscopic tears in them
• Muscles use up the glycogen (stored form of glucose) to perform the movements

Rest between movements

When you rest between movements in your exercise routine, you are giving just enough time for the muscle to recover before you perform the next movement with the right technique and posture. Compromising on this will increase your risk of injury because you will end up repeatedly stressing the muscle without allowing it to recover. An ideal rest time is 30s to 2 minutes between movements depending on what your goal is.

Rest days in a workout schedule

Trust me, more is not always better. Working out 6-7 days a week with no adequate rest will not let you build strength or endurance, it will just let you feel fatigued. Strategically placed rest days in a workout routine are beneficial to ensure your muscles recover well from the exercise induced stress. More importantly your muscle generates metabolic waste products (lactic acid) when you exercise and it takes time to remove those as well. This is exactly what happens when you rest well. Your muscles flush out the waste, repair the tears and refill their glycogen to come back stronger!

Vigorous cardio activity like an intense sport requires you to rest every 3 days at least.

When you lift weights, rotate your muscle groups (chest, back, legs) so they get time to recover. Rest each muscle group for 1-2 days.

You could also strategically place days of low intensity movements like swimming, biking or yoga in between weight training days as these effectively help remove metabolic waste generated during weight training. In fact, if you have planned a day of full house cleaning, do it after a day of strength workout!

But rest days do not mean lazing on the couch. What can we do to make it count?

• You continue to eat a balanced diet
• You could include low impact activity as mentioned above like – house chores, walking, swimming, yoga
• Adequate water intake
• Hit you step count goals!