Do You Need Rest Days If You Sit All Day?

It’s 5 PM and, according to your laptop, you’ve had a really busy day. And you feel pretty tired because of all the work you did. Meanwhile, your step count says you barely moved, so when you look at the rest day on your workout plan, it seems ridiculous.

What exactly are you resting from if you’ve spent all day sitting?

This is why too many people start treating their workouts as something they have to do to make up for all the sitting they did that day. And even though they worked out yesterday, it feels like that barely counts because they’ve done nothing in terms of physical activity today.

So they work out again, and perhaps even add a hard session to really feel like they’ve done enough.

The problem is that sitting all day doesn’t mean you’re ready for a full workout at the end of the day if you’ve been training every day for the past 5 days. On the other hand, you don’t necessarily have to spend your evening on the sofa simply because your schedule says so.

What do you do then?

Sitting at Work Doesn’t Cancel Out Yesterday’s Workout

Everyone knows rest days are important, but you’ve spent your day answering emails and sitting in meetings, so there’s a good chance you’re itching to get to the gym to “make up” for all the sitting you did. Yesterday was leg day, and so far, today has been a nothing day, so it seems reasonable to want to do another session.

The only problem here is that your body might not be ready for it, no matter how much sitting you do. Besides, it’s not like yesterday doesn’t count just because you’ve been sitting so much at work.

It doesn’t matter that you go home and change out of your gym clothes because your body still keeps responding to the workout long after you’re done with it.

When you stop exercising, you get a break from all that work, but being ready to repeat it takes a lot more than sitting for a day. You might really, REALLY want to train right now, and then when you try, you notice that your usual sets take more effort and you’re having a hard time controlling your movements. That’s because your body isn’t ready for this yet. If you wanted to do something, you could have taken a walk or done some stretches.

And it doesn’t hurt to look at other parts of your routine, like dietary supplements.

You might want to explore Khavinson peptide bioregulators and other supplements, but do be sure to always check the label, the ingredients, directions for use, all before you decide whether they’d be a good fit for your current regimen.

Check Your Training Week Before You Add Another Session

What happened in the past 7 days? How did your week look when it came to working out?

Count Hard Sessions, Not Visits to the Gym

If you went to the gym for 5 consecutive days, that doesn’t have to mean that you put your body through a lot. It’s not like half an hour lifting light weights is the same as half an hour doing something that kicks your butt. You should notice that difference because it tells you how hard your week was.

Try to take notes in which you describe what you did and roughly how hard it felt.

Check What You’re Loading Again

You’re doing a conditioning workout, but it’s not leg day, right? Well, not exactly.

This would still give your legs a lot to do, even if you change the exercises. For instance, say you did squats yesterday, and today you’re doing a circuit with lunges and squat jumps. Your lower body isn’t exactly resting.

Look at the actual exercises you’re doing in back-to-back sessions because it’s very likely that 1 or 2 muscle groups keep coming up.

Split those workouts a little to spread the demand across the week.

Test and Compare Performance Under Similar Conditions

Most people tend to have an exercise routine. For example, there might be a particular movement you do on a regular basis. So what you can do here is introduce a few variables, or perhaps change up the numbers a bit and then monitor your progress for a while.

So if you notice something’s different, write it down. You might notice you can no longer do 17 reps, but only 12-13, or that your sets have dropped/increased by one once you’ve changed up the weights or adjusted the movement slightly.

What you’re looking for here are things that keep happening across all the variations.

And don’t let soreness be the decision maker here. Sure, it’ll be the thing you notice the most (probably), but the soreness alone won’t be a good enough indicator for you to know whether your body is ready for something or not.

Conclusion

Sitting all day can make you feel like you don’t deserve a break from the gym, but that’s not the case at all. Wanting to stay active is okay, but taking a walk keeps you active, too. No matter how much you sit during the day, rest days are important, and you’ve earned them.

That hard session from a day or two ago still counts, so don’t feel guilty about taking it easy, and you should definitely not feel guilty about sitting while you work.