Posted on June 20, 2014 by Jenny Cromack

I woke up this morning feeling rather excited…..it’s rest day!! Wow, I bet you would never have thought you would hear me be excited about not exercising but I am! My body is tired and a little bit sore and I have a 15 miler tomorrow so this rest day couldn’t have come at a better time!

As much as it’s important to train hard, it’s equally important that we schedule rest days into our training plan so we can allow our bodies to recover and repair from those strenuous sessions so that we come back stronger and able to work that little bit harder in subsequent sessions. Without rest days we would get injured, over train and hit a plateau with training.

I, personally, normally only take one rest day per week but that’s because I’m not always doing the same thing, I currently run 3-4 times a week and do strength training 2-3 times per week, along with the occasional cycle (interested to see if that lasts beyond my triathlon….remember I only like it at the moment, I don’t LOVE it!). However, if my body is tired or I feel just generally tired I often allow myself another rest day, as I’ve got older I’ve learned I need to listen to my body more. I won’t take more than 2 rest days and I will only take that additional one if I genuinely know that having  rest day or getting an early night will be more beneficial than doing that 6th session that will potentially hamper my training rather than enhance it.

Do you know what is also a little sad about my rest day? It means I can get lots of work done! Sad eh? As you know my main priority in life is normally fitting my training sessions in followed closely by work. No matter how busy I am my training sessions will always be planned into my week and will take priority over other things, however not training today means I gain an extra 60-90 minutes to get my head down and concentrate on developing motive8 North and that excites me! I bet you’re thinking…’what a loser’! I’ve got quite a lot of exciting things going on at the moment for motive8 North and how we can develop the personal trainers who work for us, the services we offer our personal training clients and the business as a whole so it’s good to be able to get my teeth sunk into things!

I’m on track for my six sessions this week, 2 runs and 2 strength sessions in the bag already. So a 15 miler on Saturday and then a run on Sunday. On Wednesday I covered Chris’ circuit class so on Thursday I performed the same workout myself to see how hard I had worked the Wednesday crew! I think that might be the reason for some of my aches today!