rest days/rest weeks

If I'm not following a plan, I normally take at least 1 day completely off each week, and every 2-3 weeks I cut back for a recovery week.

If I'm following a plan, I do whatever it prescribes.


Edited by TriMyBest 2010-10-24 3:04 PM

I only take off 1-2 days a month, but I'm trying to combine tri training for an longish race and a HM 3 weeks later. I am following a HM plan and I bike and swim on my off/short run days. So far this seems to be working, but I will have to see how it goes when I'm running 35 mile weeks.

Strange things happen when you have minimal rest. I suddenly became lactose intolerant about two months ago. Very odd.

Depends on what you mean by rest day. I take a rest day every Friday, but do a short recovery run that day. I also use that day to do other activities (golfing, mountain biking, hiking).

After a race, I'll take a day or two off too. A rest WEEK? I think I'd pick my eyeballs out by the end of it.

I schedule 1 day off a week but it's more for family time than anything.  Every 8 weeks or so I have an easy week which is about half normal volume but never a whole week off unless I'm sick.

I don't really plan rest days, I just plan the week and if life gets in the way, then that is  a rest day.  Having said that, I went 50 days in a row once and didn't have any problems, although I am sure I could have used some rest.   I just had another run of 28 days in a row without a rest day.  I do think I am an addict.  I feel the need to workout every day in some form and I get restless and don't sleep well if I don't work out.

Yea I don't mean a full week off, but a much less load...I kno how much you can benefit from rest, since that's how u get stronger is you HEAL.. But it's so hard to takeTime off lolCheck out extremehumanperformance or athletecreator.com... They use biofeedback to test what exercises are best for that day... And basically can work out everyday based on what the body tells them...Of course if everything Yeats bad then you don't lift

I take every Monday off as a rest day and every Friday is an easy day.

I take one day a week off and about every fourth or fifth week I lighten to load by half.  18 months injury free so it's worked at least for me.

My rest days generally mean a day that I'm going to do an easy swim workout and that's it.  Friday before a race, I'll also take completely off.  Somewhere in there, life demands I take another one so I just adjust accordingly (work, illness, injury, social life, travel, etc).  There are also times when I will take a day off (or just cut a workout short) if I'm feeling extraordinarily tired and worn out that day.  If I'm not having fun with a workout - it's a sign that I need to cut it short and rest up.

Every 3 weeks or so, I'll cut volume as my recovery week, usually, it's because I'm tapering for a race.

Edited by m2tx 2010-10-24 10:13 PM

When I first started I was really guilty if I took a whole day off.  Now a rest week looks pretty good, although I doubt I'll ever let myself do that.  I feel guilty if I even take two days off even though that's what my body seems to be saying to me right now!!

It depends on the athletes goals, limiters (work, family), genes, fitness, etc but in general I have athletes train with no rest days and they take one when their bodies needs it, though all have an active recovery day every 5-7 days. On average some take a rest day (day off) every 3-4 weeks and for unload (easy) weeks I schedule those anywhere between every 2 to every 5 weeks.

When I first started working with Jorge, I didn't neccessarily agree with this philosophy.  I had always believed in the Training Bible approach of scheduling in rest days and an easy week every 4 weeks, etc.  But I found that life is busy enough that rest days tend to force themselves into the schedule whether you like it or not.  On a good month I'll train every single day, but when things get busy or my body gets tired, I'll miss when I have to.  Planning training this way has allowed me to fit in more training days that I otherwise probably would have. 

I rest a lot.