Surely you have heard that rest is also part of training. While total rest consists of stopping an activity completely, the active rest it is he who keeps us moving while we rest. Active rest has been proven to be one of the best allies to keep moving and healthy while we are not training. When we schedule a training routine, we will have a few days to rest the body. This is when we must use active rest.
Do you want to know what active rest is? Here we explain everything you need to know about it.
What is active rest
When we program a training routine, we must know that there will be training days and rest days. On on rest days it is important not to train so as not to overdo it. The mistake that most people make is to think that the more they train, the more results they will have. Nothing is further from reality. We must bear in mind that the body needs a rest to be able to assimilate the training we have done and improve. These are known as sports adaptations.
In order for the body to improve its performance and capacity, it must rest. If we accompany the training with nutrition according to the objective we seek, that is when we will take advantage of all these nutrients to generate adaptations. Adaptations that come from the nervous system in the beginning to neuromuscular and memory adaptations. For example, when we perform a type of exercise for the first time we begin to feel different sensations and the body tries to adapt to them. When we perform this exercise several times in a row, we will be involuntarily correcting all the mistakes we have made the previous time. This is how the different techniques in the exercises are learned and injuries are avoided.
Therefore, it is important to give the body enough rest to be able to adapt to situations and improve. Surely the next times you do a type of exercise you will have a greater capacity to improve and you will have gained a little more experience. To prevent the body from entering a state of rest, we try to maintain some physical activity during rest.
Rest in strength work
Let's take this example to the strength routine of a gym. When scheduling the training, he assured that we have several days off per week. In these days when we are resting it is important not to do the training we are carrying out. However, Rest does not mean that we are lying down all day without any physical activity. It is interesting to be continuously moving even if it is a simple walk or a light jog. Walking is one of the best options to stay active and be able to do different activities.
You have to look for a kind of physical activity that is not linked to exercise. This is what It is known in English by the acronym of NEAT. During the days of active rest, we can now carry out activities of lower intensity such as a bike ride, a walk, a light run, etc. The advantage of these light activities is that they provide some benefits. With these light activities we will be able to increase blood flow and provide oxygen to the muscles that will be closely related to what we are doing. Therefore, we will improve muscle recovery and we can perform better in subsequent training sessions.
If there are times when you feel tired or weak from training, consider reducing your training frequency or intensity. As active rest it is also He calls downloads many times. Surely you have ever seen a week in a training program that is known as unload week. During this week, the number of prisoners we put on the machines is reduced, the frequency of training or the intensity at which we train is reduced. It is one of the ways to take an active rest.
That is, only the fact of working at the lower intensity of active rest that we are giving to the body. The advantage that the unload week has with respect to a total rest is that we continue to generate certain adaptations in the body. This will help us to improve and optimize the profits of what we are doing.
Benefits of active rest
When we do an intense activity in which we expose our muscles, we must not forget that we are also putting the tendons and ligaments to work. These play a fundamental role in the recruitment of muscle fibers and in the performance of exercise. When we execute a movement we have to take into account that not only the muscles matter. Thanks to the nervous system, we know how to optimize movement so that the recruitment of muscle fibers will be done in the most efficient way possible. With the improvement of the exercise, adaptations are generated to improve the ability to lift weight.
When we see improvements in exercise, they are not only due to the fact that we get stronger. In short, we become more efficient. This means that we are more efficient when it comes to performing a certain range of motion. Therefore, this ability to improve technique in some exercise and becoming more efficient is obtained more optimally in active rest.
This leads us to the conclusion that active rest is more beneficial for muscle, tendon and ligament recovery. For this reason, it is important from time to time to program certain downloads in the training programs. It will help us to better consolidate the results we obtain during training. It should also be borne in mind that before planning active rest yourself on your own, it is better to ask a professional. There are times when it is best not to stop training to avoid reducing performance losses. And it is that a poorly executed active rest program can make you have less earnings.
I hope that with this information you can learn more about active rest in its benefits.