Hard Workout? You Need Your Rest
Experts weigh in on how much
Welcome back to Wise & Well (formerly Age Wise), a weekly newsletter align with the publication I recently launched on Medium. You’ll find some of the same content in this newsletter as in the Medium newsletter version, but with a featured story here and without the reader comments included in the Medium version. Let’s go…
My fitness app, which tracks my every move, recently admonished me for taking Sundays off and getting in only about 5,000 steps on average, suggesting I take a walk, at least. Yeah, app dude, I work out hard most other days. I need a rest day. But since shouting at an app is fruitless, I turned the bad advice into a PSA.
If you exercise a lot, you also need lots of rest, to give your muscles and other body tissues time to rejuvenate and repair, and to fully replenish nutrients used up during the activity. And to keep your mind fresh and ready for another week of intense effort.
Rest requirements depend on both the duration and the intensity of your workouts, explained Ken Nosaka, PhD, a professor of exercise and sports science at Edith Cowan University in Australia. And it’s wise to vary these factors from day to day.
“It may not be the best idea to do the same workout intensely every day,” Nosaka told me. “We need some cycles in exercise workouts, a mix of easier ones and harder ones.”
As we age, we need more rest to recover from the same volume of effort, but typically the intensity or total time might be less in our later-in-life workouts, so recovery time need not be more.
Bottom line: It’s great to be active every days, and 24 hours is enough recovery time for most light to moderate workouts. But rather than be bullied by an app, listen to your body. If it begs rest, give it rest.
“If the exercise is like 20 minutes of walking, it can be done every day, and the rest between workouts is still more than 23 hours, Nosaka pointed out. “However, if someone still feels tired from the previous workout, a bit of extra recovery may be necessary.” Full story >
HEALTHY READING
A selection of this week’s other informative and insightful articles on Wise & Well:
Beyond Being Beautiful, Trees Are Vital to Your Well-Being
Where poetry, art and science meet there exists a delightful article about the importance of trees to our health and well-being. This article, by a quasi-retired physician and author, inhabits that space. By Stephen Schimpff
Why is Envy Such a Powerful Emotion?
One of the darkest and most dispiriting of emotions, envy plunges us into a longing so powerful that it makes us miserable. But you can learn how to recognize and manage it, and even find inspiration in it now and then. By Gail Post
Three Ways to Change Your Microbiome Today
Your gut microbiome eats what you eat, then helps produce nutrients and protect you from disease, among other tasks. Important stuff. And here’s the good news: You can change your microbiome. Learn why you’d want to, and how. By Sam Westreich
… which is really good to know if …
Shift Work Can Shift Our Gears Terribly
Fatigue, insomnia, GI upset, irritability, worse mental agility, and reduced performance. Those are the symptoms of “shift lag,” when people work offbeat hours. It’s similar to jet lag but, of course, a daily battle for many. This physician explains his own experience with shift work, and the often creeping and unnoticed toll it takes on health. By Julian Barkan
Can Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro Curb the Obesity Epidemic?
Despite the promise of drugs that can help people shed pounds, healthy lifestyle choices are still key to overall health. But these drugs have shown remarkable effects on weight loss in clinical trials and could revolutionize how caregivers and the public view weight loss, a professor of exercise science argues. By Wesley Dudgeon
…but since drugs alone won’t solve the problem…
Overcome Exercise Inertia With This Simple System
“If you’re having trouble changing your habits, the problem is not you; it’s your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again, not because you don’t want to change but because you have the wrong system for change,” said James Clear, author of Atomic Habits. The solution: Daily walks, plain and simple. By Oliver Romsen
RANDOM BIT OF WISDOM
“If your resistance to starting a task now is about motivation, consider this: Motivation comes from taking action. When we simply just get started, we set in motion the very circumstances that will give us the motivation and momentum that we convinced ourselves that we needed to start the task in the first place.”
— Fuschia Sirois, from her book Procrastination
Until next week, wishing you health and happiness.
—Rob
If you find this newsletter useful, please forward it to someone who might benefit. You can find more of my health and wellness writing on Medium, plus I post health news briefs on Mastodon. And if you want to live a long, healthy, happy life, check out my book, Make Sleep Your Superpower.
Love the piece Robert. I am glad Apple watch have stopped just upping my monthly targets (There is a physical limit Mr Apple!) and have now set targets for a certain number of days in the month instead eg double your move goal 2 days this month. However, I still close my rings every day without fail but that can be done with a leisurely walk on the beach at the end of a day and a yoga session as well as a hard workout on other days.