Ice, elevate, rest.
Ugh…. not exactly the words I want to hear right now.
I have spent the past month prepping for a HUGE… something-I-can’t-talk-about-cause-its-a-secret… I have been working out 2-3x a day, eating like a bikini competitor and you know what…. I ended up in T H E B E S T S H A P E of my life.
Then. It happened. Well, I’m not really sure what exactly happened but my knee is just not right. I had just finished another great workout, and knelt down and just… OW! Stood back up… nothing. Crouch back down… OW! What the what!? It is a strange pinchy feeling in my right knee. Ugh.
Ok, I think to myself, let me evaluate here… nothing popped, there is no bruising, there is MINIMAL swelling and I can put weight on it with no pain whatsoever.
But, still, something is not right. I ice it. Elevate it. And then spend a few hours throughout the day foam rolling the crap out of my leg… all of it, hammies, quads, glutes, IT band, calf, inside of thigh… its gets better… but OW… nope still there.
Alright, so now you know is going on. Let me tell you about what is going on in my brain. A war. A war is going on in my brain. I am not happy right now. Half of my brain is like… hey, Joslin, it is all good… no pain while bearing weight on it, you can jog and jump and lunge and squat just fine… PUSH THROUGH. Follow your workout calendar.
But then the OTHER half is like… DON’T YOU DARE. You need to ice, elevate and rest. This is the logical side of my brain. The side that went to nursing school and remembers exactly where the ligaments are and what it could feel like to have strained one. The side of my brain that reminds me that all my hard work I put it was totally worth it and now is a good time to LAY the eff OFF the gym for a few days…. heck… maybe even a week.
Then the fitness (dare I say, vain) part of my brain is all… Ohhhhh you are FINE. Don’t you dare just SIT there and REST. Rest is for the weak. Rest is for the people who give up.
This side… is the guilt trip side. I really don’t know who is winning right now. I know who SHOULD be winning this war… but its a pretty solid back and forth at this point.
Have you ever struggled with this? Guilt.
You know we all do it. We guilt ourselves into doing things we really don’t need to be doing, saying, etc. I’m going to let my smart side win this war…. because, well… I already showered and put makeup on and did my hurrrr today. On purpose. So I wouldn’t let my guilt side win. Because, I have a bad feeling that if I didn’t do all of that, my guilt side would have won. And I would be working out right now.
So… logical, smart me would like to tell you why it’s so important to be OK with rest days.
First and foremost, when you work out.. whatever muscle group your are working on gets broken down during exercise. It is so important to allow time for those muscles to repair themselves, and they cannot do that unless they are being rested. The best and most effective time for your body to do this is during SLEEP.
Thing is, if you are over-training (as I most likely have been doing due to the strange knee injury) your sleep pattern is actually effected. So, not only is the over-training bad, but now I’m not sleeping as well which is not allowing my body to use sleep to help repair the micro-tears in my muscles.
The guilt part of my brain, illogically thinks that I’m going to lose all this hard work I have put in… but the truth is, it takes a few WEEKS without exercise to start to lose muscle mass. So there.
Rest days also help prevent injury. By allowing rest to repair those muscles, they will work more efficiently when you go to use them again during a workout.
Another reason to utilize a few rest days a week… over-training can possibly lead to a compromised immune system. This definitely explains why I fell asleep on the couch last night right after dinner and felt achy all over. Basically, your body is too busy repairing and growing that it kind of “gives up” on your immunity and allows those nasty germs to go to work… imagine someone is distracting the guard so the bad guy can sneak past. Yeah. Let’s not do that.
And lastly, all that over-training with no rest (which we now know means no sleep) really effects your mental clarity and makes us less productive and less motivated.
And now you probably realize by now that this post is basically written by me, written FOR me. HA!
My advice to you, go take a shower, do your hair and makeup and call it a day. I declare today National Rest Day. (And probably the rest of the weekend for me too)
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