This Is How Many Rest Days You Should Be Taking Each Week

Set audacious goals. Find a training style you love. Challenge your mind and body. But do yourself a favour and don’t ever succumb to the “no-days-off” mentality.

Even if you’re sleeping well, feel refreshed and are ticking all your muscle recovery boxes with plenty of sleep, stretching and high-protein foods, weekly rest days should be non-negotiable in your workout routine.

What is a rest day?

Think of a rest day as a break from your usual exercise routine, with no structured workouts on the agenda. When you hear the term “rest day” it’s common to think of a day spent lounging around in bed or on the couch (which is sometimes the ultimate form of self-care), but a rest day doesn’t necessarily mean you’re completely sedentary. Moving your body in gentle ways throughout the day is actually great for muscle recovery by promoting blood flow and can mentally refresh you, too.

Why take rest days?

Muscle recovery and growth is stimulated by your workouts, but the rest in between is when the magic happens! This break from training allows for your muscles to repair and strengthen, and skipping rest days can set you back in several ways. You may find yourself feeling fatigued or burnt out, getting sick more frequently, not making progress, feeling mentally exhausted or even injuring yourself as a result of overexertion or tiredness.

If you're an active person and struggle with rest days, we've got you covered with this list of 25 ways to spend a rest day.

Rest days truly set you up for your best days. We’re talking stronger workouts, faster progress, healthy hormones and a workout routine that is sustainable for life.

What’s the difference between a rest day, active recovery and a recovery session?

Where a rest day involves no structured exercise, an active recovery day includes some form of exercise at a lower intensity to your usual workouts. This could be swimming laps in a pool, going for a long walk, 20-30 minutes of low-intensity cycling, or doing a yoga flow in your lounge. Compared to active recovery, a muscle recovery session is specifically focused on foam-rolling or stretching and can be part of a rest day or incorporated in your post-workout cooldown.

It can help to think about it as a sliding scale, with complete sedentary rest at one end (hello couch), followed by a rest day with some gentle movement (walking to pick up groceries or a coffee), an active recovery day (perhaps an easy jog), or a training day (it’s go time!).

While active recovery can promote faster recovery and support your overall fitness goals, it obviously requires more energy (physically and mentally) than a rest day, so let your body guide you towards what will serve you best. As the Cleveland Clinic explains, you’ll feel regularly refreshed and ready for your next exercise session when you’ve found the right balance.

How many rest days a week is best?

Although everyone has slightly different rest requirements, the Sweat trainers recommend taking one or two rest days each week. Not every workout you do is going to feel amazing, but you want to find a sweet spot with rest days that keeps you feeling strong and energised week after week. If you notice you’re becoming progressively more burnt out each week, it’s likely you need to take your foot off the gas a bit! A few other things to consider include:

• Your fitness level: If you’re just starting out or are trying a new training style, you may need more rest days as your body adjusts. If you’ve been exercising for a while, one rest day each week may be all you need to recover and perform at your best.

• Your training style and intensity: Some training styles are naturally more taxing on the body than others. If you love high-intensity interval training, endurance training or heavy lifting for example, the need for rest may be higher than if you are following a low-impact program, lifting lighter weights or doing quick workouts.

• Your goals and program: Whether you’re following a structured weight-lifting program or a marathon training plan, having a specific goal often means following a specific training schedule with set days for rest and active recovery. One of the things we love about following a Sweat program is that all the guesswork is taken out of it, as every program has rest days built into it!

• Your overall health: At some points in the year, you might need more than one or two weekly rest days to recharge. If you’re unwell, sleeping poorly, stressed, injured, relaxing to the max on holiday, or dealing with a health condition, taking more rest days could be the best thing for you. We spoke to three incredible members of the Sweat Community who have multiple sclerosis and listening to their bodies to get the rest they need is non-negotiable.

• Your overall lifestyle: Your workouts aren’t the only thing that can leave you body demanding a little more rest and there are plenty of valid reasons to skip a workout. When commitments to work, family and study pile up, a Sweat session can help you let off some steam or drain your energy even further. Keep checking in with your own energy battery and let that guide you.

How many rest days should you take to build muscle?

One or two weekly rest days is still your best bet for muscle building! At the start of your strength training journey, post-workout aches (aka DOMS) are completely normal and might mean you need to schedule in some extra rest. Don’t worry - they will lessen as your body adjusts, meaning muscle soreness isn’t how you should gauge a good workout.

All of Sweat’s strength training programs are designed with at least one rest day each week, and the weekly workout structure usually flows a carefully planned muscle group split to make sure you’re not training the same areas of your body consecutively, even if you do have workouts on consecutive days. If you’re doing full-body workouts rather than following muscle-group splits, you might need two weekly rest days.

Rest to recharge

Rest days aren’t something you only take when you’re exhausted or sore, they’re something you schedule in every single week to take care of you. While one to two rest days is the general recommendation, how many rest days you need and how you spend those rest days is unique to you and may change slightly week to week, so listen to your body and create healthy habits that will power you forward.