Crush Your Rest Days
Okay peeps, I see time and time again how new members to the team have such a hard time taking a rest day, so I have been posting what I am doing on my rest days.
I have been on the team for 3 years, and the first year I really enjoyed, almost needed, to post my successful workouts, but now I am not so interested in that. I still hit my workout paces and am happy and proud that I am doing it, but I do not need the external pat on the back that I used to need in the past, so..........
Killin my Rest Day post is created. Post can be serious, funny, silly etc... If you are interested join me here every Mon and Fri to brag about what you got done on your rest day.
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I'm taking my rest days super-seriously and giving my body the time it needs to absorb the work I'm doing. In my world, rest days are all about stretching and some gentle yoga (no crazy Power Yoga or Hot Yoga or "I'm-gonna-stand-on-my-head-and-meditate-for-45minutes" yoga). I go through the routine with the foam roller and my shiny new R8 Recovery Roller (http://www.rollrecovery.com/r8/). Every other Friday is MASSAGE DAY!
This is my fourth season - my first with EN, and my first with two weekly rest days built-in during what the rest of the world calls the "OFF" sesason. I dug myself into a deep hole of injury following my previous plans that lacked these all-important rest days.... and finally learned my lesson. I can understand why peeps coming from more traditional high volume, slow and steady plans can have a difficult time accepting the need to rest (it's a jittery, withdrawal-like, what-do-I-do-with-myself-MUST-WORK-OUT! feeling. I get it), but with the amount of intensity built into EN plans, it's imperative to allow your body time to recover. John and I are the perfect example - in the last three years, he's had a grand total of ZERO serious injuries following the EN plans, and I've had multiple issues all over the place following plans that didn't stress adequate rest.
Yesterday I SLEPT IN (*gasp!*), had that deep tissue massage, did my rolling/stretching after lunch, and at the end of the day - a bath in sea salts to flush out the toxins I built up resting all day. ;-)
In all seriousness - I am not a fan of taking baths, but I highly recommend the Dead Sea salt bath! http://www.saltworks.us/bokek_deadseasalt.html
A great idea...even though I have no rest day planned here immediately. Frankly; I still use/consider one of my swim days as a rest recovery day....as I will do slower steady swimming....and I find it to be almost like a massage (I have also added in Massages!)....but I do think this is really a great great idea...to get people to be thinking positiviely about their recovery days....Excellent B!
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How's that for Zone5/Hard rest?
I feel like I got even more out of my rest day because instead of a workout, I used the time wisely to sleep and let my body have a chance to absorb all of the work I have been doing to set me up to crush myself again this morning.
2 yrs ago (my first season with EN) I sacrificed sleep to be able to get all of the workouts in and also do all of the dumb things I used to do to occupy my time. Last yr I gave up staying up late to watch football or simply doodle around on the internet or watching TV. I found with this focus on sleep (as if it was part of my workout plan) I was able to absorb the work much better throughout the season. I continue to focus on sleep even more now.
Today- OK, I admit that since I can not run outside Sunday due to the snow, I did that run today, so technically I did not rest today. But I did come home from work early and eat some meringue cookies. :-)
- Eat brunch or lunch, depending on how close it is to noon...
- Watch TV or fool around on my computer. Usually if I'm watching TV, being horizontal makes me involuntarily take another nap.
To get through rest days, I find it really helpful to have other hobbies that I take up during the downtime of not training (ex. reading, practicing my music, etc.)
I'll chalk that one up to a good mental break!
My training feels great due to the rest days. I am almost always raring to go when it is time to work hard.
I've been trying to get a massage every other week on a rest day (or after my Thursday workout, with a Fri rest day).
Since I sit a lot at work, I try to take a lot of walks on my rest day and keep moving.
This week, my 4th/12 in the HIM plan, I found on Monday that I was getting a few over-training symptoms: grumpy, disturbed sleep, weight loss, NO desire to do the wkos I had planned, even though this is meant to be an easier, test week. The hardest thing for me is to pull the plug, but I did, taking it day-by-day.
Monday, I just did stretching and body weight exercises. Tuesday, I ran on the treadmill before work, 40 minutes, including 8 strides and 3 x 4' @ HM pace. Wednesday, I started off with a 50 minute swim set of 100s and 50s, and tried in the afternoon to do the 5/10/20 bike test. I lasted 3 minutes into the warm-up before standing down, lacking the mental drive to gear up for any hard work. Yesterday, I repeated the swim set, and switched from the bike test to a VO2 workout, 8' of ON time. At the end of that, I felt raring to go, and today, this morning have l already done a swim test with best results so far this season. Then I will bike to the college track, do 6 x 0.5 mi @ IP/TP (2'), and bike home. Then I see being ready for the usual weekend stuff.
I literally took the past 4 days hour by hour deciding what I could and couldn't handle. But you may notice two themes I've adopted over the years when "standing down". (1) I DON'T take complete rest days. I always try to do something which counts as training everyday, unless I'm traveling or injured or recovering from a race. Doing nothing is just too devastating to my mind and body to tolerate. (2) Shorter workouts with a focus on higher intensity intervals, but less work time than usual, to me is better than LSD stuff. I can wrap my brain a lot more easily around 8 minutes @ 120% than I can 180 minutes @ 75% on the bike, for example. Or for that matter, I'd rather do a few 4' HM intervals running, than just plod along for an equal amount of time. I don't like Junk Miles, one of the reason I DO like EN.