In today’s age of high tech, fast-paced life, society places a lot of value on DOING. But for our bodies, there is more power in INTENTIONAL REST than you might believe.
Rest Will Maximize Your Workout
Exercise puts physical stress on your muscles, joints and bones which forces your body to make physical changes and adapt. You actually create micro-tears in your muscle tissue (these tears are what make you sore the next few days after a workout). Don’t freak out! This is completely normal.
Your body uses the nutrients from your food plus water to repair these micro-tears and your muscles come out STRONGER than before! This is why the more you do a particular workout, the easier it gets. Your body adapts to the exercise. So cool right??
The thing is, your body HAS to have time to rest in order to successfully repair micro-tears. If you don’t get enough rest, your body can’t fully recover. (You’ll also need plenty of nutrients and water.)
If you work out before your muscles have completely healed and adapted, you’ll be adding more stress to them. This will create more micro-tears. And constantly creating micro-tears with too little rest will eventually result in injury. I’m pretty sure you are looking for a strong, healthy body not an injured body, right?
This is just one compelling reason to make sure you’re getting enough rest. Before we talk about the best ways to rest, let’s talk about how other stress affects your body.
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Stress
We might be one of the most intelligent species on the planet, but the lower part of the brain, which takes care of your body, is still a remarkably primitive organ. The lower brain doesn’t know the difference between the stress we experience today (like meeting a deadline at work) and the stress our ancestors experienced (like running for their life from a bear). Stress is stress to the primitive brain.
This is a really important point because that primitive brain is responsible for managing our stress hormones like cortisol, adrenaline and epinephrine. When your primitive brain releases stress hormones, the sympathetic nervous system – also known as the fight or flight response – is activated.
These hormones on their own aren’t bad guys. They increase when we need to get active and get things done. So, they help us wake up in the morning. Then they help us have an awesome workout and (epinephrine) leaves us feeling amazing after the workout. They even help us snatch our kids back from running into the street.
Stress hormones can be incredibly helpful. But then they go away. That’s the important part. We need to have those cycles of activity AND rest.
That’s where your other nervous system – the parasympathetic nervous system – comes in. This nervous system handles your rest and digest response. Which is when your body is getting the time it needs to take care of you!
Unfortunately, we spend a lot of our time using the sympathetic nervous system. Daily life is fast-paced and we are always rushing to do something or get somewhere.
Even when we sit down, the blue light from computer, phone, tablet and tv screens triggers the release of stress hormones.
When stress hormones flood your system all day every day, they start wreaking havoc on your body. Stress can lead to:
- Heart disease – When your heart has to pump harder and faster all the time, it will wear out.
- Digestive issues – Stress hormones slow down the digestion process which will cause issues if you have food sitting around in your gut.
- Poor immune function – Remember when I said your primitive brain doesn’t understand that there are different types of stress? Your body will activate your immune system in response to any type of stress even if there is no physical need for it. When your immune system is always reacting, it will wear down and won’t respond well when you need to fight a real illness or heal from a real injury.
- Inflammation –Your immune system creates inflammation which is associated with many diseases including heart disease, diabetes and autoimmune disorders.
- Poor mental function – Studies have found that the brains of people under chronic stress show actual physical changes that are associated with poor memory and inability to focus.
- Pain – When your body is on high alert, all your responses become stronger, including your pain response. This makes you more sensitive to pain.
- Increased muscle tension – This leads to aches and more pain.
- Unhealthy lifestyle choices – These can lead to other diseases (smoking, drinking, poor diet, sleep deprivation).
- Poor sleep – Your body needs good sleep as well as calm periods during the day in order to remove these hormones. But the very presence of these hormones can interfere with sleep. If you’re on high alert, chances are you aren’t going to just switch off and take a nap.
This becomes a vicious cycle.
Stress = Poor Rest = Poor Recovery = Injury and Illness = More Stress
So how do you fix this?
Stop Pushing
The first step to fixing a problem is to acknowledge it right? Let’s call our lives for what they have become. As a society, we have gotten exceedingly good at “pushing through” and justifying it. We push through at work to make it to the weekend. Then we push through our workouts so we can take those steps toward our health and fitness goals. We push through illnesses because we have too much on our plate and have no time to rest and get better. We even push through to get things done in the evening, staying up late to enjoy some tv, maybe sleep a little then get up early to get a head start on the day.
Go, Go, Go.
We have to stop.
Obviously we aren’t going to see a complete overhaul of our society that will make it easy for us to cut back. But you can choose to take a little time to find more peace in your hectic life.
You need it and you deserve it. So how do you get more rest into your life?
Practice, Practice, Practice
The only thing we can do is PRACTICE. Obviously being stressed comes pretty naturally to us these days so relaxing isn’t going to come easy. You’re going to have to practice at it. But I promise it’s worth it. Not only does your body get the time to recover and make the most out of your workouts, but it gets time to do EVERYTHING ELSE to keep you physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy!
There are several ways you can work rest into your life:
- Take a rest day or two each week. (This isn’t just a day off from exercise! Read more about that here.)
- Do a proper cool-down after your workout.
- Schedule a 10-20-minute break into your day where you can sit or lay down, close your eyes and breathe
- Start a daily meditation practice – Headspace and Calm are great apps to get you started.
- Make the last half hour before bed self-care time – Turn off all technology, make a cup of calming tea, and sit quietly – you can journal, meditate, or just breathe in the peace!
- Shoot for 7 hours of sleep or more per night.
The more you practice, the easier it will get to find your calm, and the better you will feel.
What has worked for you to get good-quality rest?
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