Rest days

Today I'm taking a much needed recovery day from the workouts. I slept well, ate a big breakfast, took a little nap and have basically spent the entire day doing not much of anything. When I think back on the past week, I realize my body really needed this break.

I usually don't work out more than four days a week, but this past week, I lifted six days in a row. In retrospect, I realize that's probably overdoing it a bit.

On the 5/3/1 plan the scheduled work days are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Instead of taking off on Wednesday, I did a set of 20-rep squats followed by barbell and dumbbell curls. Scratch one rest day. On Saturday, I wanted to try out the Farmer's walk and performed a total of six circuits around my backyard course. Scratch another rest day. I essentially robbed my body of two important recovery opportunities.

On paper, it looks really good. People say, wow, you're really working out a lot! In truth, this is more than likely just a setup for disappointment. Those recuperation days are as important as--if not more important than--the workout days themselves. It's only during the recovery period that your body actually gets stronger.

Admittedly, a lot of people can do this and not only get away with it, but even thrive on the constant activity.

But not me.

For one thing, I'm not a young guy any more. When you start closing in on that half-century mark, you realize you may not be able to push yourself as much as you used to and continue to make any progress. For another, I've always been the classic hardgainer. For many years I made the mistake of trying to follow some cookie-cutter bodybuilding and powerlifting plans to no avail. When I finally wised up to what would really work best for me, I found myself working out far less than I used to.

At first I followed the three-day-a-week, whole-body workout plan, the old standard. It was fine to some extent, but here's the problem: To do cover all the bases in one workout, you may find yourself in the gym for two hours or more at a time. My workouts eventually ballooned to three hours, three days a week. One big problem with that is it's hard to find that much time in a day to work out. The other problem is that you rob your body of recovery time. The longer you spend working out, the less time your body has to recuperate. And the best recovery comes in the time period immediately following the workout. If you go from doing a set of heavy squats to doing heavy bench press, your body is expending energy that could be spent on rebuilding those broken down quads.

So the best plan is to get in and out as quickly as possible and give your body time to recover. And that almost certainly means splitting your workout in some way.

Believe it or not, the most difficult thing for me was to honor those rest days. I split my routine so I benched only once a week, squatted only once a week and deadlifted once a week. Weekends were strictly recovery days. And every time I rested, I felt lazy.

But the bottom line is, I got stronger. So I learned how important those recovery days are.

Now it seems I may need to relearn how to restrain myself as I did when I first discovered the value of logging much-needed rest days.