How important is a day off?

[ghanie]

I didn't care so much when I was only managing 20 minutes of yoga per day. But these days I'm up to 20-25 minutes of power yoga in the mornings and 30-40 minutes of yoga in the afternoon. I have a feeling that 40 minutes of power yoga isn't that far off so I'm thinking some rules might start applying to me, if not already.

Right now a day off consists of switching my afternoon yoga with 45 minutes of classical stretch which I do twice per week.

Do I really need to not do any exercise for a day out of the week?

[Debra]

Some people train everyday, others, take a day off. The difference between the two is that the people who train everyday are usually athletes and they have trained professionals who know how muscles work and know when to back off of routine excersizes and switch to something less stressful on the muscles.

The rest of us need a day or two of rest. It's a chance for muscles to recouperate. You could still excersize if you'd like, but try taking it down a notch. The goal is to excersize like you keep doing, but maybe alternate between excersizing hard and stretching or lighter excersizing.

While talking to my doctor about this very issue, he said: 'You need to alternate your days of excersizing and having a break in order to decrease the chance of injuring your body.'

I think the key thing is to listen to your body. If something feels like it hurts or if your body is just feeling run down, then take a break!!

I think I just talked circles LOL I hope I helped in some way!

[sourpuss]

I think since you are replacing a workout day with stretching, you should be just fine.

[ghanie]

Oh I'm not replacing an entire day with stretching, just the afternoon. I'll probably add a whole day in there once I bump the power yoga to 40 minutes next week though, based on answers.

Many thanks!

[ghanie]

Ok, time to follow this up with my own answer .. a day off is VERY important!

When I went back on exercise yesterday I discovered that one of my routines is too easy for me now; I ended up craving an extra 40 minutes and found that one to be easy too.

So there's something to this whole "let your muscles repair" thing. Time off seems to be as important as exercising regularly, go figure.

[keysupplements]

You answered yourself correctly taking time off allows the body to heal thus it increases the muscle tissue that enables the body to perform better.

Actually athletes take days off as this is the proper way to train.