Striking a Balance Between Exercise and Rest

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avalonblues
avalonblues Posts: 558 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
One of the things I struggle with is deciding, at my age, are things like: How often I should work out in a week? How much rest do I really need after a workout before I workout again?

Typically, I workout when my schedule allows, but that has led me to four Crossfit sessions in five days and that turned out to be a little much.

Is there a received forumula or guideline for knowing how often a person should rest between workouts or how many workouts are too many? Or is that something that has to be decided by trial and error?

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  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 48,574 Member
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    Trial and error. A good gauge though is if you start feeling really tired or depleted (and your eating is right), then you may not be getting enough rest in between.
    My opinion on Crossfit is because it's more HIIT, you shouldn't do it more than 3 times a week. That's pretty rough on the nervous system.

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  • cjgsmg
    cjgsmg Posts: 131 Member
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    It's a personal thing. I can only run every other day or else it kills my knees but I have a friend who runs 5 miles 5 days a week. Your body tells you.
  • canadianlbs
    canadianlbs Posts: 5,199 Member
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    my thing is progressive lifting, so it's not too difficult for the rest to just arrange itself. for one thing, my programme prescribes a certain number of workouts per week. so i just do the programme and fill in my little sticker chart every week.

    the other thing i use is just whether or not i'm dealing well with whichever workout it is. if i struggle for more than one session, then i look for some way to adjust.

    idk if crossfit really allows for that as it seems to have so many more variables. with my thing, you're always doing the same four lifts and all that varies is the weight. if you start to struggle with something, it's not that you're not familiar with the movement. therefore it's more likely that it's because you're not rested enough.
  • trudie_b
    trudie_b Posts: 230 Member
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    I agree, listen to your body. I've recently scheduled in one rest day a week, because I'm doing hard workouts the other six, and I know I need it.

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