After a week or so of consistently working out, this invigorating sense of accomplishment and excitement for life appears. Whenever I experience it, I want to keep working out all day, every day. I even find myself watching the clock, waiting and waiting for 6 p.m. to hit just so I can start my workout session. Adrenal fatigue is a breakdown in the central nervous system that causes serious physical exhaustion and can be caused by too many intense, consecutive workouts, which is what happened in my case. It had my whole body feeling weak and broken. My strength was around half of my normal capacity, I had cognitive fatigue, and I lost weight. I abruptly stopped training, undoing months of progress. Long story short, we must respect and embrace the standard breakdown and rebuilding process our bodies go through, and I learned that the hard way. Here’s why taking time to recover will actually make your performance stronger. Our muscles don’t just build back to where they started from: New muscle fibers will be stronger and larger in volume when they rebuild. This increase is our body’s way of accommodating the new requirements you’ve set for them. So if you’re not taking rests, you keep your muscle fibers in a broken state, which prevents them from repairing. Worse yet, you’re preventing them from growing stronger. Treat your muscles right, and they will not only repair fully but build additional strength for your next workout. From January to June, I slept six hours per night. I was asleep by 11:30 p.m. and awake at 5:30 a.m. It started as a 30-day experiment that I decided to keep going, but I began suffering from physical burnout pretty quickly. So I decided to sleep 7.5 hours per night for 30 days. I recognize that I’m only a sample size of one, but the outcome was interesting. I found that my energy levels and mood were noticeably better, I didn’t feel the need to drink coffee in the mornings, and it was a lot easier to wake up. These outcomes indicate to me that this is my body’s desired state of being. Beyond instinctual cues, I also feel so much stronger at the gym with this newfound energy. I also meditate before bed now. Meditation is proven to reduce anxiety and improve mood, confidence, and focus—and I found that to be very true for me! This additional mental time and space have probably been the most rewarding parts of taking rest days. Before any workout, we must have emotional energy. That’s what actually motivates us to exercise. If we don’t attend to our mind’s happiness levels, we risk sacrificing workouts we haven’t even done yet. I speak from experience when I say that it’s extremely valuable to give yourself the chance to catch up and the opportunity to recover. It pays dividends, emotionally and physically. Inspired by this story? Read up on how a low-intensity lifestyle changed Jordan Younger’s life.
