When in training, people struggle taking effective rest days. It can be hard to get into the mindset that completely resting your body, not just having active rest days, is vital when you are building up for any event, including a cycling race. Your muscles, your body and your mind all need to rest and recover in between training sessions otherwise you are jeopardising your health and your race success. But why is rest so important during training and what can you do to ease the process?
Muscle Repair
When training and exercising, your muscles are constantly being pushed and this creates tiny tears. These tiny tears repair themselves and result in your muscles becoming stronger. For cyclists, if you aren’t giving your glutes, hamstring and quads the rest period they need to make these repairs, you are more likely to injure yourself and actually backtrack with your training progress rather than seeing performance improvements.
Prevent Fatigue
When training, you are using up huge amounts of energy with each session, and this energy needs to be replaced in between sessions. You don’t need intense training for each and every workout, even if you are preparing for a race. Doing this will mean your body doesn’t have enough time to replace all the energy stores, and this can result in muscle soreness and fatigue. Athletes that have overworked their bodies and experience this tiredness run the risk of injuring themselves by making a mistake or through overuse. Giving your body an effective rest day prevents this from occurring.
Motivation
If you are experiencing soreness, feel that you are more tired than usual and the thought of doing another training session makes you want to crawl back into bed and forego the race, these are sure signs that your body is over-worked, and you are putting too much pressure on yourself. Your body and mind are literally screaming for a rest day. It is time to put your feet up and relax, watch a movie, play pokies online, or take a soak in the bath. Turn your mind away from cycling for a day, fuel your body with protein, carbohydrates, fruits, and vegetables to aid muscle recovery, and get yourself a massage to increase blood flow. After taking an effective rest day, you are guaranteed to wake up the following morning absolutely raring to get back on that bike and smashing those performance targets.
Sleep Improvements
Exercise is known for helping people drift off into a restful, deep sleep. But over exercising actually has the opposite effect. Energising hormones are released when you exercise, and by not having rest days, your body starts to over produce them and struggles to return them to their normal levels. This means your body has a hard time relaxing and sleeping well, which in turn decreases your overall performance. If you aren’t well rested, it can be hard to push yourself to improve on your best times or cycle those extra few miles. Taking rest periods will boost your energy, improve your endurance, and help you make significant performance improvements.
Taking rest periods during training may sounds counterproductive, but the science says otherwise. Rest your body, refuel, and allow it to repair by scheduling in rest periods during your cycling training so you can give your best performance yet on race day.
