Key takeaways
- Taking rest days allows your muscles, connective tissues, and joints to heal from microscopic damage caused by exercise, which is essential for building strength and preventing injuries.
- Without adequate rest between workouts, your body cannot fully restore its glycogen energy reserves, leading to muscle fatigue, decreased performance, and potentially compromised immune function.
- The number of rest days you need depends on your workout type and intensity. Moderate cardio requires a break every 3 to 5 days, while resistance training needs approximately 48 hours of recovery before working the same muscle groups again.
Rest days are breaks from high intensity exercise that are necessary for muscle recovery and physiological and mental stress relief.
Exercising regularly is undoubtedly one of the best ways to maintain optimal health, but prolonged strenuous activity without sufficient rest can lead to muscle, tissue, or joint injuries, as well as fatigue and burnout.
Taking regular breaks allows your body to recover and repair. It’s a critical part of progress, regardless of your fitness level or sport.
Keep reading to learn more about the benefits of taking rest days, how to optimize them, and which signs may indicate that you’re overtraining.
This article is Day 5 of Healthline’s 30 Days of Movement Challenge. Learn more about how you can build long-lasting fitness habits through quick and accessible exercises by following the Challenge.
Next, read Day 6: How to Power Walk to Boost Energy.
Here’s a look at the advantages of taking regular rest days.
1. Allows time for recovery
Contrary to popular belief, a rest day isn’t about being lazy on the couch. Rest days are critical for allowing all parts of your body — muscles, connective tissues, joints, and brain — to recover.
It’s during this time that the beneficial effects of exercise take place.
Exercise creates microscopic tears in your muscle tissue. But during rest, cells called
Certain types of exercise or repetitive movements can also strain your ligaments and tendons. Like muscles, these connective tissues need rest periods to repair, heal, and regenerate.
Overtraining with insufficient rest days can also lead to joint injuries. Over time, repeated stress on the joints can cause inflammation, degeneration, and damage.
2. Prevents muscle fatigue
Rest is necessary for avoiding exercise-induced fatigue.
Your body stores carbohydrates in the form of glycogen. During exercise, your body breaks down glycogen to fuel your workout. Rest days give your body time to replenish glycogen stores before your next workout.
If these stores aren’t replenished, however, you can experience muscle fatigue and soreness.
Depleted glycogen stores may reduce the levels of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in your muscles. ATP is the main energy source for all the cells in your body. Depleted stores can affect neurotransmission and calcium release from certain muscle fibers, contributing to muscle fatigue.
Carbs also play an important role in supporting your immune system and repairing damaged muscle tissue.
Plus, your muscles need glycogen to function, even when you’re not working out. By getting adequate rest, you’ll help your glycogen stores replenish and prevent fatigue.
3. Reduces risk of acute injury
Regular rest is essential for staying safe during exercise. When your body is overworked, you may be more likely to fall out of form, drop a weight, or take a wrong step.
4. Improves performance
When you don’t get enough rest, it can be hard to do your normal routine, let alone challenge yourself. For example, you might be less motivated to do an extra rep or run another mile.
Even if you push yourself, overtraining decreases your performance. You may experience reduced endurance, slow reaction times, and limited agility.
Rest has the opposite effect. It can help boost energy and prevent fatigue, preparing your body for more intense and successful workouts.
5. Supports healthy sleep
Regular exercise can improve your sleep, but overtraining without taking rest days can impair sleep quality.
Physical activity increases energy-boosting hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Constant exercise, however, can overproduce these hormones, making it difficult to fall asleep or stay asleep.
Rest can help you get better sleep by letting your hormones return to a balanced state.
The ideal rest day looks different for each person and depends on many factors, including the intensity, frequency, and duration of your regular exercise routine, as well as your lifestyle outside of exercise.
Healthcare professionals commonly classify exercise into two categories, aerobic and resistance exercise, each with their own recommended guidelines for activity and rest.
However, it’s important to note that many activities fall within both categories, so it can become difficult to set an “exact” number of rest days.
From Our Editors“I started to intentionally implement rest days into my weekly exercise routine around 3 years ago, and it’s had a big impact on my general physical and emotional well-being, as well as sport performance.
I integrate at least 2 active rest days per week to help my body recover from high intensity exercise, but when these are slotted in ranges from week to week, as I try to plan them around single- or multi-day rock climbing trips – which depend on the season, weather, and how long the trip is.
My rule of thumb, however, is 2 days of high intensity activity like climbing, hiking, or weight training, followed by 1 active rest day, such as walking and stretching.”
— Alex, Editor
Quotes represent individual opinions. All content is strictly informational and should not be considered medical advice.
Aerobic and cardiovascular exercise
Aerobic or cardiovascular (cardio) exercise involves moving large muscle groups for prolonged periods to increase your heart and breathing rates, facilitating the circulation of oxygen in your body.
Typically, rest days aren’t necessary for light cardio exercise, such as leisurely walking or slow dancing. It’s safe enough to do every day, unless your doctor says otherwise.
But if you’re doing moderate or vigorous aerobic activity, rest days are essential. It’s recommended to take a rest day every 3 to 5 days. If you do vigorous cardio, you’ll want to take more frequent rest days.
Each week, adults should aim for at least
These guidelines can help you plan your rest days. For example, if you’d like to do 3 days of 50-minute vigorous cardio sessions, you can plan rest days and other workouts around them.
You can also have an active rest day with a light workout, such as mobility work, yoga, or gentle stretching.
Resistance training
Resistance, strength, or weight training typically incorporates rest days by rotating the muscles worked.
Healthcare professionals typically recommend incorporating resistance training targeting the body’s major muscle groups at least twice weekly, and resting for around 48 hours before training the same muscle group.
After exercising a specific muscle group, let it rest for 1 to 2 days to let your muscles, tendons, and joints repair and heal. On the other days, train different muscles or incorporate aerobic activities, such as walking, cycling, hiking, or swimming.
It’s important to work opposing muscles to keep your body balanced. There are many ways to split your weekly workouts, such as full-body, upper-lower, and push-pull splits.
How many rest days for weight loss?
If you’re trying to lose weight, you should still have regular rest days.
Rest allows your muscles to rebuild and grow. And when you have more muscle, you’ll burn more calories at rest. That’s because muscle typically burns more energy than fat.
Additionally, when you feel refreshed, you’ll be more likely to stick to your exercise routine.
Rest days provide great opportunities to recharge, recover, and replenish the body. Here are several things to consider:
Diet and protein
On rest days, it’s important to provide your body with the right nutrients to help support muscle recovery, repair, and growth, as well as boost your energy levels.
Your body may not need as many calories because you’re less active. For instance, your body may naturally “ask” for less food through satiety and hunger cues.
However, it’s best not to set a specific calorie limit and instead focus on eating nutrient-dense, well-balanced meals that are high in protein, complex carbs, and micronutrient-rich fruits and vegetables.
Adequate protein intake helps support muscle repair during rest. Active people should eat at least 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight (0.7 grams per pound) each day. This should be evenly spaced throughout the day.
It’s also important to drink plenty of fluids and to remain hydrated.
Low intensity movement
Low intensity activities can help you stay active without overstressing your body and let you enjoy exercise in a more relaxing way. Some examples of activities that can be done at lower intensities include:
If you notice any of the following signs, it might be time to take a break:
- Sore, stiff muscles: While it’s normal to feel sore after exercise, persistent soreness is a red flag. It means your muscles haven’t recovered from past workouts.
- Fatigue: Pay attention to extreme exhaustion. If you feel spent, let your body rest.
- Pain: Muscle or joint pain that doesn’t go away might be a sign of an overuse injury.
- Emotional changes: When you’re physically burnt out, hormones like serotonin and cortisol become imbalanced. This can cause irritability, crankiness, and rapid mood shifts.
- Sleep issues: High levels of cortisol and adrenaline can make it hard to get quality sleep.
- Reduced performance: If your normal routine feels difficult, or if you stop seeing progress, take a rest day.
Medical Perspective“If you’re sick, taking an extra rest day is not only OK, but it could be the optimal decision — it’s all about personal honesty and listening to your body’s signals about readiness to train.
If you know that your mind and body require rest to perform optimally, it’s OK to take an extra rest day.
But if you know your body is well rested and you find yourself wanting to skip a workout, then ask yourself if you’re just lacking motivation in the moment to ensure you go ahead and train if it’s what you know will benefit you most.”
— Jared Meacham, PhD., RD, CSCS
Learn more about exercising and taking rest days when you’re sick.
Quotes represent the opinions of our medical experts. All content is strictly informational and should not be considered medical advice.
If you’re new to exercise or haven’t worked out in a long time, consider speaking with a healthcare professional or a personal trainer. They can help you determine the best workout schedule for your fitness level.
They can also help you increase intensity, duration, and speed safely. Most importantly, they can explain how to incorporate rest days based on your personalized routine.
No, two rest days per week is typically not too much, so long as you’re remaining active, hydrating, and eating a balanced diet.
However, the number of rest days you need weekly depends on many factors, such as exercise frequency, type, duration, and intensity.
Yes, rest days may help lower cortisol levels caused by intense physical activity. That said, many factors can affect cortisol levels, such as psychological stress, so it’s important to manage these aspects as well.
Whether you’re a novice or seasoned athlete, regular rest is crucial. It’s necessary for muscle repair, to prevent fatigue, and to improve overall performance.
To make the most out of your rest days, consider doing low intensity workouts like yoga and walking. These activities can help you stay active while letting your body recover.
Remember, without enough breaks, you’re less likely to achieve the goals you made in the first place. Letting your body rest is the best thing you can do for fitness success.