Taking Rest Days/Increased Soreness

[Brian Leach]

I follow the CrossFit WOD schedule, but until recently did a poor job at actually taking taking rest days when they were scheduled (even though I know it's good for me). Instead, I would find myself in the gym doing anything from a light workout (active rest day, so to speak) to 1RM Deadlifts, just because I wanted to.

Over the past few weeks, I've made it a point to follow the 3-Day-On, 1-Day-Off routine, and since then I've noticed that, while I don't appear to be making any significant gains or losses beyond what I was seeing without the rest days, I find that I experience more soreness following the WODs than I did before.

My completely unscientific, uneducated conjecture is that by utilizing my rest days and giving my muscles time to heal, I am able to (for lack of a better term) tear them better and with greater efficiency when I work out than what I was able to do when I didn't take the rest days. Without the rest and time to heal, I wasn't able to tear the muscle with that same efficiency and therefore wasn't as sore, but I also probably wasn't rebuilding them as strongly or efficiently either.

As I said, that's just my uneducated opinion, and would love to hear some other people's take on the subject of my increased soreness, and rest days in general. Thanks!

Cheers!

[Mike ODonnell]

Muscles grow by 2 ways....first a catabolic (muscle breakdown) stimulus from the amount of force/intensity/weight you train them with...and the anabolic (muscle building) rebuilding response from the catabolic stimulus, that only happens when you are NOT working them out....so yes...anabolic rest is crutial to progressively increasing the catabolic stimulus to make the muscles bigger and stronger in the long run.

Simply put....yes....rest to workout harder....then rest and repeat.

[Steven Low]

Couple factors possibly

1. additional stress (from life)
2. additional stress (workouts have been tougher)
3. poor nutrition
4. poor diet
5. not enough rest for the body (1 rm DL on a rest day? yeah, this is part of it)

Take off 2-3 days and see if you can come back and hit a PR. If not and you have beginning level strength you probably need to take off another day or two. If you're new to CF you should be seeing PRs every week.

REST DAYS ARE REST DAYS. Unless you're on a different schedule DO NOT SKIP REST DAYS AND WORKOUT. If you do I have no sympathy when your progress starts going backwards instead of plateauing. Or if you injure yourself (overuse or possibly acute).

[Brian Leach]

Originally Posted by Steven Low

Couple factors possibly

1. additional stress (from life)
2. additional stress (workouts have been tougher)
3. poor nutrition
4. poor diet
5. not enough rest for the body (1 rm DL on a rest day? yeah, this is part of it)

Take off 2-3 days and see if you can come back and hit a PR. If not and you have beginning level strength you probably need to take off another day or two. If you're new to CF you should be seeing PRs every week.

REST DAYS ARE REST DAYS. Unless you're on a different schedule DO NOT SKIP REST DAYS AND WORKOUT. If you do I have no sympathy when your progress starts going backwards instead of plateauing. Or if you injure yourself (overuse or possibly acute).

Additional (life) stress could very well be a part of it. I'm not new to CrossFit and my nutrition/diet, while not perfect, is fairly good. I typically follow a semi-Paleo diet (will occasionally have milk or cheese...or beer), consuming around 2500-3000 calories a day with a Fat:Carb:Protein ratio of 60:20:20.

[Mike ODonnell]

Originally Posted by Brian Leach

Additional (life) stress could very well be a part of it. I'm not new to CrossFit and my nutrition/diet, while not perfect, is fairly good. I typically follow a semi-Paleo diet (will occasionally have milk or cheese...or beer), consuming around 2500-3000 calories a day with a Fat:Carb:Protein ratio of 60:20:20.

Life stress is a bigger health risk than any training schedule....so go take a couple days...week off and just play....run around...bike....chase women....enjoy life!

[Steven Low]

Chasing women is stressful though.

[Mike ODonnell]

Originally Posted by Steven Low

Chasing women is stressful though.

Not if you setup traps....