Fitness
rest your muscles to get stronger
Rest Up To Tone Up
You’ll get fitter faster if you build recovery days into your training. Here's how...
Believe it or not, you can sculpt a tighter, sexier body by doing absolutely nothing. Allow us to explain. When it comes to reaching your fitness goals, rest and recovery are just as important as all those sweat sessions. Here’s why: when you exercise, you break down muscle fibres. As the fibres heal, they come back stronger. It’s that healing process that reshapes your body – but it only happens when you give your muscles a break. So do your body good by taking a workout breather.
Here are some recovery rules...
Being sleep-deprived messes with your hormone levels and depletes your energy, resulting in ineffective workouts and cravings for sugar as a source of quick energy. What’s more, your body repairs itself best when you’re sleeping.
Need some motivation to switch off American Idol reruns? A study at Stanford University had 1000 volunteers report the number of hours they slept each night. The people who got less than eight hours of sleep per night had higher body fat content. Aim for seven to eight hours a night.
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Last updated: Fri, 2010-04-09 11:47
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Fantastic advice !!
I spend my life telling Spinner to ride recovery rides and not to always push strength all the time.
I have installed the team heart rate system from Suunto which everyone uses to measure the training intensity and it delivers results.
So listen up and do the recovery sessions and force yourself to have a full rest day once a week !
Andrew
Awsomeadivice
where can I buy a foam roller
thanks
Hi Lina,
you can buy a foamroller at htherapy.co.za. The have no clue about exercise and recovery, but they sell the most affordable roller that I could find (around R280, I think). It is expensive for a piece of foam and you can
build mor affordable, alternative tools (PVC pipe covered with foam), but in the end, it is a must!
Hope this helps!
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