WHEN TO TAKE REST DAYS FROM WORKOUTS?

Are you the type of person who sometimes struggles to fit all of your physical activity into a 7 day period? Do you wish you could plan 3 strength training, 2 cardio days, and 2 yoga days into your training week and still have days you don’t do anything at all?

The good news is, you can!

It’s all about reframing what your training week actually looks like and how it is laid out. Mainly, it’s about getting away from the idea that a training week has to be 7 days.

LET'S BREAK IT ALL DOWN

Before we get into what a training week can look like it is important to go over some terminology to help understand how training calendars work.

First off, periodized training. Periodizing our training means that we are consistently providing a stimulus and forcing the body to adapt to that stimulus. When we stress the body over time, allow it to recover, and then stress it again, we can gradually build fitness.

When we periodize our training, we're most often using terms like macrocycles, mesocycles, and microcycles.

A macrocycle refers to your training season as a whole. (e.g., for athletes - one macrocycle would include off-season, pre-season, and in-season training).
A mesocycle refers to a particular training block within that season (e.g., hypertrophy phase, endurance phase, etc).
A microcycle refers to the smallest unit within a mesocycle (e.g., usually a week of training). THIS is going to be our main focus as it pertains to restructuring your “training week”.

NOTE: By structuring our training with these cycles in mind, we can ensure that we’re building and recovering adequately for more optimal adaptation.

Now, back to microcycles. This is where the reframing will come into play for some individuals. A training week does not have to be 7 days. A microcycle, by definition is just the amount of time it takes to get through one rotation of all the days you train and rest before restarting back to day 1. Meaning, you can theoretically have your training week be 10 or even 14 days.

Now, a few additional factors to consider here…

A 10 day microcycle will result in possibly less frequency of hitting a specific muscle group over time. This factor only matters as much IF training intensity and volume are not accounted for. If you’re training hard (at or near failure) consistently when you are doing the work, you can usually afford to have that frequency be a bit more spread out.

Another factor is what you’re doing on non strength training days. If you’re simply planning to rest on non training days then the 10 day microcycle may not be for you as much but again, this depends. People have busy lives, or busy seasons of life. Fitting even 3 days of training into 7 days can be a lot for some people. So, taking those 3 days and spreading them across 10 might be more manageable. On the other hand, if you like strength training but also like to incorporate yoga, pilates, or running, or some other form of cardio, then you should definitely consider the 10 day microcycle as an option.

The central nervous system doesn’t care what you trained, it simply responds to the stimulus placed upon it. If you keep trying to cram a lot of training, regardless of what it is, into a 7 day week, you risk poor recovery and therefor poor adaptation. However, if you accept that you can plot out a longer microcycle with a little effort and planning, you can still fit in all of your training.

LET’S LOOK AT AN EXAMPLE…

What would this look like? Here's an example (remember these are one the many, many ways someone can lay out their training weeks).