When it comes to calisthenics, some people mistakenly believe that you can exercise every day and still make progress.
This is absolutely incorrect.
Exercising every day, without rest, will undoubtedly lead to overuse injuries, CNS fatigue, and pure exhaustion of both your physical body and your psyche.
But how much rest do you really need each week?
Let’s take a look!
What is Overtraining?
Athlete overtrained
Overtraining is a phenomenon that occurs when one completes a huge volume of exercise, at high-intensity, without adequate rest, for extended periods of time. For instance, performing 1,000 pushups a day, every day, with no days off, will more than likely lead to overtraining.
When one suffers from overtraining syndrome, one will often display fatigue, decreased performance, and many other indicators that he or she simply needs some time to rest and recover.
Worst of all, recovering from overtraining can sometimes take months, if not longer, before the body can reset and return to baseline performance levels.
But How Do Pro Athletes Train So Hard?
Professional athletes have dedicated their entire lives to their sport. Everything they eat, every exercise they perform, and everything they do is overseen by an expert to ensure that they get close to a point of overtraining, but that they never reach it.
Sometimes, high level athletes may be pushed to a point of “overreaching”. Overreaching can be thought of as a short-term, transient form of overtraining. However, overreaching can be effectively worked into an athlete’s program, as long as adequate rest is built in for a few days after some high-volume, high-intensity work.
Also, it should be stated that athletes who have made it to the professional level are a unique breed. Their bodies are special, and they may simply have features and traits that enable them to push harder than the average person without developing overtraining syndrome. As much as we may wish it weren’t so: not all of us can train like the pros.
How Much Rest Should You Get Each Week to Prevent Overtraining?
This will vary widely based on your goals, your current fitness level, and a variety of other factors. However, most novice exercisers do well with a three-day plan, in which they perform a total body workout on non-consecutive days during the week. As you may gather, this means that four days each week are then dedicated to rest and recovery.
This ensures that you are getting the minimum requirement for rest for each muscle group (48 hours) before training said muscle group again.
Another way to go about figuring out your rest requirements is to simply listen to your body. As simple as it may sound, just stopping when you feel like you’ve been doing too much, or going too hard, can sometimes be the best way to make sure you schedule some rest time.
The Main Takeaway
The work you do in the gym is incredibly important. However, you need to prioritize your rest just as much as you do your exercise. If you don’t, you’re likely to end up with an injury or a whole host of other problems.
Just getting started with calisthenics? Need some more direction with your calisthenics routine? Check out the Caliverse app today!
About the author : Daniels
