The Problem with Rest Days
It can be hard to take a day off. I get it.
You’ve been dedicated in training, and your fitness is improving. You want to keep getting better, stronger, faster. You don’t want to lose momentum, motivation, and certainly not your hard-earned fitness gains.
But here’s the thing, if you don’t take rest and recovery seriously, all those things you fear (fitness plateaus, loss of momentum, low motivation) will most certainly come true.
This is because fitness doesn’t continue on an upward trajectory forever. That’s not physiologically possible.
There has to be a period of ⬇️ in order to go ⬆️ again.
Taking a day off used to be hard for me too, but not anymore. So I wanted to share what changed.
Realization that a rest day doesn’t have to mean doing nothing.
Understanding that fitness doesn’t continue to build forever.
Learning how to recognize the signs my body needs a rest day.
I shared a bit about this idea on my social media yesterday, and the response showed this is something many athletes struggle with.
Jenn- “I love recovery days… but sometimes (or many times), I do household jobs and ignore my recovery…”
Nikki- “I’m still working on allowing rest days. After two overuse injuries, I get that my body is telling me all the time. I have to work on the guilt or laziness I feel if I rest.”
Raquel- “Struggling with this. Terrified I will lose fitness.”
So in today’s post, we’re talking about rest.
How fitness gains happen when we rest
Common misconceptions about rest
What happens if you don’t rest
Why the #nodaysoff mentality is holding you back
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Fitness gains happen when we rest
I’m about to blow your mind…
Fitness gains don’t happen during workouts. They happen during periods of rest.
Wait, what??!
It’s true. You aren’t getting any more fit during your long bike ride or interval run. You’re accumulating fatigue and stressing the body to prompt physiological change. A workout or training session simply provides the stimulus.
So when do those changes take place?
During rest. That’s when the body has a chance to absorb load and respond to training stress.
A good way to think about rest and recovery is the period of time in between two workouts. So this might be a few hours or even 24 hours.
Here’s what happens to the body during rest.
Muscles have time to repair micro-tears and rebuild stronger tissue
Allows glycogen stores to replenish for increased energy
Mental re-set that can improve motivation and reduce likelihood of burnout
Improves neuromuscular function and reduces risk of injury
Reduces risk of overtraining and decreased performance
Enhances the immune system
There’s a difference between a workout and training. A workout is the physical activity. Training is the entire process that includes workouts, proper nutrition, rest, sleep, and recovery.
The period of time between workouts (rest and recovery) is important for building strength, muscle, preventing injury, and avoiding the dreaded fitness plateau or overtraining syndrome.
Common misconceptions about rest
Rest isn’t just not exercising. It also involves adequate sleep, nutrition, and recovery activities like wearing compression boots, taking an epsom salt bath, or going for a walk.
Also, taking a rest day doesn’t mean you have to sit on the couch and do nothing. (Although you can, if that’s what you need.) Rest can mean doing a mobility session or stretching and foam rolling.
Active recovery is a term you’ve probably heard associated with recovery, but you have to be careful not to use this as an excuse for more exercise. Active recovery is a low-intensity activity that promotes blood flow and helps with recovery. For example, this might look like a 30-minute spin on the bike after racing a 10K.
Rest is a period of time that allows the body to repair and rebuild.
You don’t lose fitness gains during periods of rest. If anything, it’s the complete opposite.
Even taking a full week off doesn’t necessarily result in any significant loss of previous fitness gains. Research has shown that measurable cardiovascular losses can be seen within 2-3 weeks of complete cessation of exercise. But even then, decreases in muscle strength and power occur at a slower rate, up to 4-6 weeks (Hoag Orthopedic Institute, 2025)
A study looked at a group of endurance-trained men ages 19-26 to see how their bodies responded to 2 weeks of detraining.
While muscle strength decreased, muscle endurance wasn’t affected.
Growth hormone levels increased, enabling the body to repair muscle tissue during the break.
Short periods of detraining may actually increase lean mass.
And we’re not talking about taking weeks off here, we’re talking about a rest day. A single day.
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What happens if you don’t rest
Athletes who don’t incorporate rest and recovery into their training can experience:
Physical and mental fatigue
Loss of motivation
Increased risk of injury
Higher likelihood of burnout
Fitness plateaus
Overtraining syndrome
Beginner athletes often see continuous improvement (for a time). After all, there’s nowhere to go but up. Right? However, as athletes become more experienced, and more fit, improvements are harder to come by. Also, the risk of fitness plateaus increase.
A fitness plateau is when you don’t get any worse, but you don’t get any better either. Think stagnation. But contrary to what you might think, a fitness plateau doesn’t mean you should train harder. Sometimes, you need variation in the style of workouts, introduction of a new stimulus, or yes, even rest.
“You plateau when your body gets so accustomed to the demands of your workouts that your progress gradually comes to a halt. It’s when you’re doing all the work, but the results have stagnated, leaving you wondering why you are putting in all the effort.”- (Bronwyn Griffiths for Polar, 2025)
In order to see change, the body needs progressive overload. This is the gradual increase in volume and intensity of workouts, which encourage muscles to adapt to new demands. But overtraining can happen when we push too hard without taking time for necessary rest and recovery.
Overtraining syndrome is a medical condition that occurs when an athlete exceeds their body’s ability to recover, due to repeated or strenuous physical activity. It’s more than just being sore and tired. It causes physical, mental, and emotional symptoms.
Symptoms include: muscle pain, poor sleep, sickness, unexpected weight loss, insomnia, mood changes, tachycardia (high heartbeat), loss of motivation, extreme fatigue, depression, and bradycardia (slow heartbeat).
While the symptoms of overtraining are bad, the complications that can result are even worse, including muscle strain, tendinitis, cartilage tears, and joint injuries. Studies estimate that 2/3 of elite runners and 1/3 of all runners experience overtraining syndrome at some point.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, sports that track performance based on races are more likely to cause overtraining syndrome. Those sports are: swimming, cycling, and running. Uh-oh. Triathletes are in TROUBLE.
How do you fix overtraining syndrome? Depending on the severity, it might involve backing off high intensity exercise, reducing training volume by 50-70%, or complete rest.
Read More: Are You an Athlete or an Addict? How to Plan Off-Season the Right Way
The #Nodaysoff mentality isn’t about discipline
You might see your favorite social media personality talking about #nodaysoff like it’s the key to increased fitness and performance success. It’s important to realize that this isn’t reality. The human body simply doesn’t work that way. It’s just a catchy tagline.
Honestly, they don’t even mean it that way. I can “almost” guarantee you they aren’t working out every single day of their life. And if they are, who knows how much stronger, healthier, and faster they would be if they actually gave their body the rest it needs from time to time.
After all, not taking an off day isn’t even what the No Days Off philosophy means. It’s a mindset or lifestyle that’s characterized by consistent dedication to self-improvement and personal growth. If you’re truly dedicated to setting yourself up for success, then you should be dedicated enough to take a rest day.
I enjoyed this quote attributing Dr. Michael Kellman in a Triathlete Magazine article about the “No Days Off” philosophy. “He writes the reason why athletes choose to continue to train without taking time off has to do with a lack of self-regulation. He points to traits such as perfectionism or an inability to self-monitor and manage emotional states as contributors to an athlete’s desire to not take time off.”
And before you say, elite athletes don’t take time off, that’s not true either. What you see on Instagram or TikTok is a snapshot in time. People are more likely to share photos and videos of their swim, bike, and run than their rest days. But that doesn’t mean they don’t happen.
Take a look at the 2024 IRONMAN World Champion Laura Philipp’s stats from a recent training camp in Mallorca.
30 hours of training per week
20K of swimming per week
450K of cycling per week
70K of running per week
6 recovery days in 22 camp days
8.5 sleep hours a day
I really appreciate that she included the stats about the number of her recovery days, as well as the number of hours she sleeps a night. All too often, it’s easy for amateur athletes to fall into the trap of focusing on the who instead of the how and why. We can learn a lot more from elite athletes if we pay more attention to what they do and why they do it, rather than what wetsuit they’re wearing, what brand of nutrition they use, or how many miles they ride a week.
“God didn’t rest because God was tired. God rested because rest is holy. It’s a rhythm built into the heartbeat of creation. And we are invited to keep time with it.”- Andrew Ware