Day 21: Recovery Day!!!
Now that we have done our first cardio, let’s talk about the general schedule we are going to follow here.
Typically, I recommend that you alternate your days as follows:
Cardio
Strength Day
Rest Day (which can include just rest & recovery, or for the intermediate and advanced members, can include some gentle ab bracing, foam rolling, foot/ankle or stretching)
Now, something to think about. Your exercise routine does not exist in a vacuum. You have to always take into consideration the other things going on in your life. Sometimes we need an extra rest day- but how do we know?
Here are some of the things we need to consider when deciding whether or not to take an extra rest day.
Your health: how are you feeling? Are you feeling any warning signs of a flare? Exhaustion? Brain fog? Body aches or soreness? General malaise? Overwhelm? GI issues? If you are experiencing any of these symptoms or feeling under the weather or having a flare-up of any kind, you can take an extra rest day as needed. Now, I saw this with a caveat- which is that I often find that doing gentle exercise such as gentle ab bracing, foam rolling, foot/ankle or stretching can actually reduce the feeling of being sick- but I leave that up to you to experiment with. I do not encourage you to push forward with anything new or challenging if you are having any of these issues.
Your “busy-ness”: Have you been super busy with housework, errands, and other non-exercise personal life things? We need rest and recovery days from that too.
Jenessa shared this on the facebook page and I think it covers this topic nicely:
Yesterday (day 7) was the kind of day I used to think of as a rest day, back when I started AIS: a day when I didn’t do AIS exercises because I needed to do too many other physical things that day. I’ve realized that that isn’t really a rest day, since I’m not resting, I’m just busy! So today I’m going to take a real rest day.
A rest day is not a recovery day simply because you are not doing your exercises. It actually needs to be a day when you slow down and give your body time to recover.
Special events: Often, there is something big going on in our week. It might be something difficult, or it might be something fun! If there is something different about the week, like a birthday event or a work deadline or a trip of some kind- I do not recommend pushing forward, and I encourage you to take extra rest days until the big thing passes. Any event can cause stress- even happy ones! And so we want to manage your stress levels and keep the demands on your body in check until this event passes.
Hopefully this helps give you extra insight into when and why we need extra rest days, and how to make that decision for yourself.
Post on Facebook or share with Andrea:
What do you think of these special considerations? Do you take actual rest days? Or are they simply just busy days?