How many days off do you take?

Mondays and Wednesdays are moderate.

Fridays are super hard.

Saturdays are usually yoga.

Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays I try to take off from on-purpose exercise. I'll still go to the pool with the kids, or we'll just be up and busy with other things - but I'll also spend the day sitting if I want to.

Loose schedule though. This is how I like to lay out my week. Having a family though, and especially now that the older kids aren't in school, I'll adjust as necessary.

I usually strength train 3 days a week, and do cardio 2-3 days. I'm starting to really hate cardio, though, so I think I'll have to think about switching that up. I also usually take weekends off, but I also work weekends, and my job keeps me moving. I started off trying to work out every day, and I got burned out and started getting ill and hurt.

I'm lifting four days a week now as well. I'm considering throwing in some marathon training work over the summer (I'm a teacher) that would take me down to only one day a week that was truly "off", but so far I'm feeling lazy. I'm sure that will begin to change as I start to get antsy with nothing to do.

Almost everyday is a day off for me. *shrug*

It took me a while to get comfortable with taking a rest day. I pushed it one month, doing SL5x5 3x/wk and walking 3-4miles/day with only 2 "off" days. I actually decreased in performance during that month. I wasn't letting my body recover and I suffered from that. I learned the hard way that an effective/productive workout schedule doesn't mean "balls to the wall" every single day. An effective and productive workout schedule means you push your body enough to increase endurance, strength, etc while giving your body enough "off time" to repair and recover to be prepared for increasing expectations.

Everyone always tells me that it's really bad to work out 7 days a week, and that you can actually do more harm than good working out this much. My problem is, I always feel guilty skipping the gym, even if I had went the past six days that week.

How many off days do you normally take in a week?

I take one day off. Mondays. Because no one likes Mondays anyway. I learned my lesson about taking days off when I got a tibial stress fracture before my first marathon. Recovered from the injury and learned to train smarter, not harder.

I generally work out 4 or 5 days a week. However, one rest day is simply because I clean house, do laundry, etc... Generally run around all day. I don't count it for exercise or anything, but I don't know that it really counts for much rest. In the summer I probably stay more on the 4 day a week workouts because I'm outside more and more active in doing stuff outside anyway. In the winter, I generally hit the 5 days a week workout. Rest days are important, though. The body needs to recover. Mixing up your routine can help, too.

Usually one, sometimes two, sometimes none. Today is my "rest" day, but I feel like running, so I'm going to. I think you should listen to your body.

I lift weights 4 days a week. I will do cardio on 'off' days sometimes, sometimes not. Usually end up working out in some way about 5 - 6 days a week.

It all depends on what you are doing. If you are following an actual plan its going to have off or easy days in it. If you are just burning calories and varying your activities, you can get away with less rest days. But if you are run down, take a day off. Sometimes I end up doing things on my off days that are just as taxing as my workouts.