May 2024 dear alex and meredith…
This month’s question comes from one of our fitness members:
I am someone who struggles to sit still and am pretty much excited about everything active and outdoors. Sometimes I wonder if I could use a little more structured rest. What does a rest day look like for you?
We hear ya! We love all sorts of activities and the outdoors! We moved to Fernie for this exact reason, to be closer and to have easier access to our favourite activities. However, taking the time to recover and recharge on a regular basis is also very important. Remember in order to actually adapt to your training you must allow yourself to recover from it. You don’t recover from doing more… you get stronger and fitter when you allow yourself to recover from the stresses you put yourself through. What a rest day looks like can be very individualistic and is influenced by your personal values and/or goals and commitments.
For example, Alex is training for an upcoming marathon and Meredith a 100 mile gravel bike race. During the lead up to our races our priorities shift towards our training and performance for those races. So for us an active rest day may look like taking Rue to the mountain bike trails for an hour or in the winter hitting the ski hill for a few runs, instead of spending the full or half day doing these things. On these active rest days the volume and intensity of the activity (whatever that may be) should be low enough at the end of the day allow you to feel recharged and excited for the next day of training. Other times our rest days can be more sedentary where we take Rue for a walk or to the dog park where she can run wild and free. We generally plan this type of rest days with our busiest work days so that our interests and obligations are not battling our attention.
At the end of the day base your decisions on how you are feeling. If you are tired, worn out, then rest. Some of the telling signs you need a rest day: always sore (DOMS lasting more than 2 days), irritable, poor sleep (difficulty regulating body temperature – aside from a hot flash), weights for lifts start to feel heavier than they normally do or you are are struggling to meet the marks you typically can.
If you are not training for anything in particular (aka for life) with our program design (5 days a week), our goal is to have you use your fitness. So if you’re finding that doing every session is leaving you too worn out to do the fun stuff outside the gym, then reduce the training volume. This may mean doing 1 less day a week or cutting out a section or two from a training day. We want our training program to enhance your ability to do the things you love to do, not take away from it!
