REST

Having enjoyed a wonderful rest day yesterday and dealing with the reality of going back to training, school, come monday morning i thought I would explain my thoughts on resting.

Until a few months ago when I began working closely with a exercise physiologist I didn't believe in rest days.

My (own) theory was that as long as i was working my body in different ways each day it wouldn't need rest. For example if friday was a hard gym and technical judo day then I would work my cardio and randori more on saturday. It seemed logical to me but it did mean that i was constantly jaded and operating at about 80%. I thought that was no problem because given a little taper I would be firing 100% come competition.

Unfortunately as time dragged on I started feeling the effects of over-training more and more. I would have chronic muscle soreness, feel lethargic most of the time, struggle to concentrate, have real issues getting to sleep and many other things which are really not fun to be dealing with when you are trying to peak physically and mentally come competition.

Eventually I had the benefits of complete rest explained to me and it was something I started to work on. If I was able to train 12 sessions a week at 90% of my maximum and have a day off. Then that would lead to much more improvement in my abilities then 13-14 sessions at 75-80%.

When that is mapped out over an 8-16 week training cycle it makes for a considerable difference in the end result.

I have now been operating with 1 day off a week for about 5 months now and I can say it has really been of benefit to me. I have been able to improve my performances in training, my concentration has been better and aspects off the mat have been helped too. I get to have long lunches with the family at home, get to spend couple of hours completing uni work and even get to veg out on the couch and watch tv for a change.

I do sometimes feel restless and revert back to meat-head mode that I could be doing more training (haven't broken a sweat in 24 hours!) but it just means I put that much more effort into my sessions on my work days.

I assure you that come sunday morning there is absolutely no petrol left in my tank.

Monday mornings still suck cos there is a hell of a lot of huffing and puffing to be done before my next day off!

Ivo