Please Don’t Make This Fitness Faux Pas

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you the importance of moving your body.  We’re all familiar with the “30 minutes, 3x per week” guideline and numerous health benefits that adopting even the simplest of routines can bring.

However, even with all that is known today about exercise, there is one important aspect of maintaining a *healthy* and *effective* exercise regimen that many people ignore forget…

Recovery

If you want to see optimal results from your exercise routine, you MUST allow for adequate recovery.

Why?  Let’s start with strength training.

When you engage in any sort of resistance training – whether it’s weight lifting or simple bodyweight exercises – you are actually creating microscopic tears in your muscle fibers that MUST be given time to heal.

In fact, it is during this healing phase (i.e. RECOVERY) that the muscles actually increase in strength and size.

In other words, you are NOT actually building muscle when you are training.  It is only during recovery, when your body is able to repair the damage, when you will gain mass.

And this applies to all forms of exercise, not just strength training.  As long as you are engaging in moderate to intense activities, you should be allowing adequate recovery.

So…how do you incorporate adequate recovery into your fitness regimen?

How to Recover

The general rule is to wait *48 hours* after working a particular muscle to engage that muscle again.  So if you trained your chest and shoulders on Monday, you would not work these muscles again until at least Wednesday.

This is one of the reasons you will see many weight lifting routines structured like this:

• Monday: Chest and Back
• Wednesday: Biceps and Triceps
• Friday: Shoulders and Legs

This structure ensures that you only work each muscle group once per week, allowing plenty of opportunity for recovery and muscle growth.  The days in between strength training (in this case, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) are perfect cardiovascular activities.

While it is good to give the body a break from cardio – such as jogging, swimming, and biking – these activities can often be done back to back on consecutive days.

That said, if you ever feel tense, exceptionally sore, or just plain exhausted the next day, be sure and rest those muscles.  Remember, the heart is a muscle just like any other and needs adequate recovery to adapt, improve, and function properly.

Now, what to do with that extra Sunday?  Hmm…

Rest Days

After all that is known today about the importance of recovery, it boggles my mind how many people continue to follow workout routines that do not include rest days!

If you are not including a rest day each week, you are doing your body a *great* disservice.  As mentioned above, your body NEEDS time to recovery in order to grow and adapt to the extra work.

Even if you experience little to no muscle soreness after your workouts, rest days are still important.  Giving your entire body AND mind a full day off is necessary to regroup and get excited about the week to come.

So in the example routine above, Sunday would be reserved for rest.  And while you can certainly take the entire day
off from exercise of any kind, you do not have to.

On my rest days, I like to keep active with a full body stretch routine and maybe a brisk walk with my dog or bike ride around the neighborhood.

The key here is that any activity you do participate in is casual and low impact.  If you do not feel refreshed and ready to workout at the start of your next training week, that is a good indication that you overtrained and need to schedule in more rest for the next week.

Putting It All Together

So the completed example routine would look like this:

*Example Routine*

• Monday: Chest and Back
• Tuesday: Cardio
• Wednesday: Biceps and Triceps
• Thursday: Cardio
• Friday: Shoulders and Legs
• Saturday: Cardio
• Sunday: Rest

This routine allows for adequate recovery between workouts as well as a full day of rest for full body and mind recuperation.

And remember, it’s always important to listen to your body.

If you are new to exercising or just feel that you need additional time to recover, don’t feel bad about taking the time off.  Recovery is an integral part of working out and, as I hope this article has shown, is vital to helping you achieve the fitness results you desire.

Go raw, be fit, and RECOVER,

Swayze

P.S. As important as adopting a well-rounded fitness routine is to your overall health and well-being, you can’t experience optimal vitality and performance without a healthy diet.

Trust me, I’ve tried to get fit and trim on just hours of exercise alone while still eating all my favorite junk foods…

No dice.

If you really want great results, you have to improve your diet.  By far the best and the *simplest* diet…you guessed
it…is a low fat, high fruit raw vegan diet!

And what better way to get started improving what you eat than by experimenting with easy, delicious, and healthy
recipes:

www.fitonraw.com/low-fat-raw-vegan-favorites

You’ll have no problem going raw and getting healthy with this collection of over 35 raw food favorites from several long-term low fat raw vegans.  There’s even a 7-day meal plan to help you go raw as soon as possible.

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Simply visit the following link for more info and to purchase your copy today:

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