We have all heard about how recovery is the most crucial part of obtaining your goal(s), but do you really know ?

Many still feel guilty when they take a day off. One way to help relieve this guilt is to understand the many benefits that a rest day has to offer.

For instance, rest is physically necessary for the muscles to repair, rebuild, and strengthen. For recreational athletes, building in rest days and engaging in active recovery can help maintain a better balance between home, work, and fitness goals.

Exercise depletes the body's energy stores, or muscle glycogen. It also causes muscle tissue to break down. Giving adequate muscle recovery time allows the body to "fix" both of these issues, replenishing the body's energy stores and repairing damaged tissues.

If sufficient time is not allowed to support these processes, the body will break down from repeated intensive exercise. This can reduce your performance. It may also result in damage to your skeletal muscles, which means more soreness and pain.

The Principle of Adaptation states that when we undergo the stress of physical exercise, our body adapts and becomes more efficient. It’s just like learning any new skill. At first, it’s difficult but, over time, it becomes second nature. Once you adapt to a given stress, you require additional stress to continue to make progress.

But there are limits to how much stress the body can tolerate before it breaks down and suffers injury. Doing too much work too quickly will result in injury or muscle damage. Doing too little too slowly will not result in any improvement.

Too little rest and too few recovery days can lead to overtraining syndrome. The consequences of overtraining are many. Research has found that it can increase your body fat, raise your risk of dehydration, lower your libido, and worsen your mood.