Hello Wahmsters!
Welcome to Day 6 of our Staying Healthy During Quarantine (SHDQ) series! Today, we will be looking into an interesting concept for our workouts and also more nutrition tips!
Today, we will take a look into the concept of an active rest day. When we do a lot of intense workouts on a daily basis, our body accumulates fatigue over time and this may affect our performance in future workouts. This is when you use an active rest day where you take a break from the intense workouts that you guys have been doing and focus on just resting. However, it is an active rest day so you still have to do something to get the blood moving in your body. This can be walking, jogging, biking, stretching, doing yoga, doing mobility exercises, or even working on a specific sport skill.
Therefore, today, I will let you guys choose what you want to do for your active rest day!
I have attached a couple of links down below to help you brainstorm some ideas.
1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xqOc4hJu94 (ignore the supplements at the end)
2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7AYKMP6rOE (yoga workout)
3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSYkJIOnT78 (jump rope exercises)
4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dT4KHtMM-A (mobility exercises)
5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p8EBPVZ2Iw (beginner core workout)
My personal favorite thing to do on an active rest day is to play my sport because it gives me a variety of ways to move my body and it is also competitive. However, since we are required to practice social distancing, I now do more mobility exercises to increase the range of motion in my ankle, hips, and shoulders for athletic performance. I also do more core workouts to build a solid six-pack :).
Moving onto nutrition.
Since today would be a rest day, I want to talk about a concept called carb cycling and I will get to the action tip down below.
Basically carb cycling is a way that many fit individuals and pro bodybuilders do to build as much muscle while keeping the fat off their bodies for as long as possible. How does that apply to normal individuals like us Matthew?
How it applies is that it teaches us to eat the right amount at the right time. What carb cycling suggests is that we want to eat more carbohydrates during the day of our workout or the night before (hence carb load) to give our body more fuel and thus energy to perform our intense workouts. On an off day, such as an active rest day, we would want to eat fewer carbohydrates because our activity levels are not as high and we are not burning as much so it makes sense that we should consume less.
Therefore, the tip that I want to give you guys is to eat more during your workout days and eat less during your rest days in order to help you guys reach your health goals.
If you want to look into carb cycling more, please check these out:
Good luck!
Matthew