Is it time to push or rest?

jelleigh
jelleigh Posts: 743 Member
edited June 2020 in Health and Weight Loss
For the last few months I've been getting into a decent fitness routine. Or really, any fitness routine at all lol. So for like 3 months I've been following Beachbody's 21 Day Fix. (For those unfamiliar, it's 30 min per day, 7 days a week. 5 of the days are HIIT cardio and weight lifting. The last two days are Pilates) I'm really really trying hard to not skip days because is a slippery slope for me. The last two weeks I've tried to increase my activity a bit more. I've thrown in a 10km brisk walk 1-2 times a week and yesterday am I tried to do a short spin class (I say tried to because it was super hard and I only got like half way through it before stopping lol).

So after my embarassingly short spin class, work, and a 10K walk, I was zonked! Went to bed early and slept awful. I kept waking up feeling so sore and achy . This am I'm not feeling HORRIBLE but I'm wondering if I should be considering a rest day? I don't want to go too easy on myself so I could push through, but I also want to be smart about this.

Any advice on how to decide when to sub in a rest day without it just becoming a 'i feel lazy' go to?

Replies

  • littlegreenparrot1
    littlegreenparrot1 Posts: 702 Member
    You should have rest days, they are important.
    You plan them in, I have at least 1 a week.

    Ploughing on regardless without listening to your body is at the very least a good way to get really fed up with it, at worst it is a good way to injure yourself so you end up with more time out.

    Just because it often comes up, are you eating back those exercise calories? Because if not that might also be helping to make you feel rubbish.
  • Hanibanani2020
    Hanibanani2020 Posts: 523 Member
    Listen to your body. If you do anything make it a nice easy walk to just move those muscles and maybe some stretching or a hot bath
  • busyPK
    busyPK Posts: 3,788 Member
    Have at least 1 rest day a week. Also sounds like a lot of exercise on a daily basis. Maybe switch out another day and just have an active rest day (do your walking then).
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    Are you correctly eating more than MFP base calories with NO workouts being expected - since you are doing a whole lot more?

    Some people trust MFP to give them a calorie eating goal because they have no idea on their own.
    Then they add workouts, and suddenly don't understand why their eating goal went up, and assume now MFP went bonkers and are smarter than it and don't eat more.
  • jelleigh
    jelleigh Posts: 743 Member
    Thanks for the input everyone! Some good points brought out but in answer to your questions:

    Ive done about 4 rounds of 21 day fix and am progressing a lot with it. Ive been feeling in the past couple of weeks that I could handle doing a bit more. The purpose of this extra exercise isn't really about weight loss. Its more that I have a few months to make some progress on lowering my cholesterol levels before my dr will want to put me on meds (which I want to avoid) and cardio exercise is one of the best ways to accomplish that. (Ive also adjusted my diet accordingly and am taking a soluable fibre supplement). Although there are two cardio days per week in 21DF, from what I read I would be better suited to do some cardio every day (20-30 min or so). I see people on here all the time that seem to double up programs so i figured it wouldnt be bad in itself. Also, I recently broke my toe and so the 21DF cardio was sometimes not practical, but I could manage biking.

    The Spin I'm doing at home following a youtube video. I think the issue I had there was that it was like 6 am and I hadnt eaten or really woke up fully (ive never really worked out just out of bed) and it was just too fast a progression into intense cardio. And its my first time on this bike (I just got it last week) and it was acting weird so I just kinda gave up part way in and figured I would revisit and adjust my approach.

    The problem with the whole "listen to my body" approach is that my body NEVER wants to work out! Lol. My traitorous body wants to sit on the couch and do nothing! Maybe while eating chips ! So I'm more trying to balance the obvious need to give my body a rest, with my inherint laziness and the fact that I typically feel better after I workout.

    For eating: ya on days with higher activity, I bump up my intake.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,178 Member
    So, if the 21DF is working and workable for you, and you want to add more, start by adding something easy. If your goal is fitness, then LISS is a big part of any rational overall fitness picture (well, any program with a cardio component ;) ).

    Intense exercise: Shorter and less frequent. Less intense steady-state exercise: Longer and more frequent. All part of a good program.

    Elites don't do high intensity exercise every day, 7 days a week. Why would we? (Yes, their low intensity is objectively as intense or more intense than our high intensity exercise, but that's about fitness and adaptation. What matters is the mix of challenges to our current fitness level, not how we compare to their fitness level.)

    Back a few years, my first rowing coach was a NCAA Division I coach (coaching my team as an outreach program). At one point, she gave us li'l ol' ladies the same structured training program she was using with her 18-22 year old Div I athletes in a very successful team at the time . . . but adjusted to our fitness level (same activity mix, same percentages of high/low intensity, but fewer total hours per week, and much slower speed targets (tailored to each of our heart rate response curves at the time, just like she did it with the collegiate rowers).

    Typically, the first thing to do - which she did with us before that point - is to build a bit of endurance base, but after some basis is in place, we regular folks can do the same mix of intensities higher-level athletes do, because the principles are similar. We just do them at intensities, durations, frequencies that tailor them to our current fitness level, in order to advance that fitness.

    So, is my point that it's cooler to do complicated training plans like higher-level athletes? No, it's not cooler, nor is it necessary (absent competition goals). My point is that they don't kill themselves stacking up high intensity (to them) workouts every danged day . . . so why the heck would it be a good plan for us regular people to do that?!?

    So don't skip days if you don't want to, but as heybales said, don't overload the easy (recovery) days with intensity. They're there for a reason.

    And if you want to increase total volume, don't just try to add a big jolt of "brisk 10K walk" and "super hard spin class". I'm thinking you're already getting a dose of intensity from 21DF. Add some LISS, if you want to add. Phase it in, like maybe once a week, at moderate duration, and monitor how your body responds. If all is well, add another day. And so forth. As your fitness improves, all of your exercise can stay with the same mix of intensities . . . but your level of intensity will almost magically increase as you get fitter. Your easy walk will speed up, and get longer if the same time-duration, as what was once hard for you gets easier with improved fitness.

    You can work out every day (generally) if you want to, eventually even twice a day, but do keep the active-rest/easy days in there as per the schedule. Right now, I think you should take an actual, full rest day. Maybe two. You overdid it. Think of it as a prescription, with a definite plan to resume. You're a seriously active person, right? Part of that is recovery. So recover. You are not the "give up" slippery slope person anymore. :)
  • hipari
    hipari Posts: 1,367 Member
    Adding more cardio sounds like a reasonable goal, but here’s the catch: cardio doesn’t have to be a 10K walk, a spin class or anything that long or high intensity. Instead, it can be a 20 minute walk, walking or biking to run errands instead of driving (depends on distance, obviously), playing some sports with kids etc. Anything that gets your heart pumping a little but doesn’t make you gasp for air. The local official healthcare guidelines described the level of health-improving endurance cardio as ”must be able to speak without huffing and puffing” (in Finnish the rule is called the four Ps because the whole description is 4 words and they all start with P), and I think that’s a pretty good rule of thumb and could be very useful in your case, since you already have the higher-intensity workouts going.

    As an anecdote about low-intensity cardio: years ago I had really bad back issues and went to physical therapy twice a week for more than a year. The therapist basically taught me to stand and walk again - not because I wasn’t able, but because I did it so wrong I messed up my back to the point of bedrest. Anyway, the cardio exercise my therapist recommended: going shopping. You get a good amount of steps walking around the mall and shops in them, take frequent breaks to browse items, and pace is slow enough. I’m not saying shopping would be a good solution for adding cardio in your case, but the fact that it’s a viable exercise option recommended by healthcare professionals is a reminder that everything counts, no matter how small or low-intensity.
  • jelleigh
    jelleigh Posts: 743 Member
    Ok thanks @hipari and @AnnPT77 . So maybe I can do some steady state bike riding at a lower resistance or slower pace. I do remember the "you should be able to talk" rule. Or one also heard you should be able to talk but not sing? I will try maybe once or twice a week and go from there. Thanks for the reminders and insight everyone!
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,178 Member
    jelleigh wrote: »
    Ok thanks @hipari and @AnnPT77 . So maybe I can do some steady state bike riding at a lower resistance or slower pace. I do remember the "you should be able to talk" rule. Or one also heard you should be able to talk but not sing? I will try maybe once or twice a week and go from there. Thanks for the reminders and insight everyone!

    Just keep it easy. If you have a heart rate monitor, you can use that as a guide (maybe stay 60%-ish, heart rate reserve?).

    Don't push your luck on the talk/sing thing, BTW, because it can be gamed if one is trying: After long practice talking while rowing hard in bow of a quad, I can talk in short sentences at nearly any intensity, and sing well into zone 4, for a stanza. :lol: (Bow rower steers, so yells commands at the other rowers, loud enough, over boat and oar noise, to reach people 15 or so feet away who are facing in the other direction. Practicing things makes a person better at them ;) .)

    So: If you use the "talk" guide, you want it to be easy to talk in full conversational paragraphs, not just possible to say a sentence or so. :lol:
  • heybales
    heybales Posts: 18,842 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    jelleigh wrote: »
    Ok thanks @hipari and @AnnPT77 . So maybe I can do some steady state bike riding at a lower resistance or slower pace. I do remember the "you should be able to talk" rule. Or one also heard you should be able to talk but not sing? I will try maybe once or twice a week and go from there. Thanks for the reminders and insight everyone!

    Don't push your luck on the talk/sing thing, BTW, because it can be gamed if one is trying: After long practice talking while rowing hard in bow of a quad, I can talk in short sentences at nearly any intensity, and sing well into zone 4, for a stanza. :lol: (Bow rower steers, so yells commands at the other rowers, loud enough, over boat and oar noise, to reach people 15 or so feet away who are facing in the other direction. Practicing things makes a person better at them ;) .)

    Well, that's just your classical training for stage musicals coming out there. Let's see, rowing - would that be more Pirates of Penzance or HMS Pinafore? ;-)

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