In a recent blog we discussed how to stay fit when travelling and that’s a great mindset to have - how to stay consistent at all times to maximise your fitness journey. But, playing devil's advocate, is taking the week off the gym a good idea?
Well strap in, because sometimes it can be good to have a week off but only when done right. Too many people use it as an excuse for not going to the gym for a week and that turns into 2 weeks, then 3 and so on… Or people take a week off the gym every other week and then complain that they don’t make any progress and the timing plays a massive part here.
Taking a week off the gym for muscle recovery
This isn’t a myth - sometimes your muscles need a break to recover and reset. Have you ever noticed you’ve had a week off the gym (for whatever reason) and you come back stronger? Feels weird and counterintuitive, but sometimes your muscles need a week to allow themselves to fully recover and build back stronger. This also allows you to reduce the risk of injury from overtraining and stressing your muscles. Look at it from a top athlete level, professional footballers need time off to prevent injuries even when they don’t have a specific injury to create longevity in their career. We can pretend it’s because it’s best for them mentally but these people are money making machines and if they could play 12 months of the year, they would be contractually made to, but we know this off season break is vital for them extending their careers by 3+ years.
Most people will say every 8-12 weeks, you should have 1 week off. It’s often useful to use the week after your week off as a testing period and go in this cadence, but it’s most important to plan ahead and see when you should be fitting in your time away from the gym. We go into a bit more detail about increasing strength and testing in our blog on progressive overload.
Taking a week off the gym for mental health
Have a break, have a KitKat. A break from the gym can be good for your mind to reset, do something different, and come back to the gym. Particularly on holiday when you’re getting away from normalities, the week off can be good for you here, although if you are obsessed, you can read our blog on staying fit when travelling.
Using this time is a good place to evaluate your fitness goal and put the time into talking and reviewing how your training programme stacks up with this. Maybe you can write your next 8 week programme to make going to the gym (knowing what you’re going to do) easier and require less thinking capacity as you get on and do what has been planned out for you. Maybe look for some new amazing gym equipment like the Unitree PUMP.
Taking a week off the gym because life gets in the way
We see these influencers show a day in the life or the latest get ready with me (GRWM) trend and it all looks fantastic for likes and views. But has anyone normal actually done what they do day in day out? Unlikely.
Things happen in life which take time and are often unexpected which means you suddenly miss the gym for a week. Don’t stress - keep yourself balanced and know that you will get back into your routine but some things are temporarily more important. That’s fine, the influencers get paid to look like that, we get paid other ways so have more reasonable expectations that sometimes life will get in the way but you can be assured that you’ll get back to it when you can.
Fitness isn’t just about lifting weights and running, it’s something you make as part of yourself so if you take a week off it doesn’t mean you now don’t belong in the gym, you’re just not there for now, but, as Arnold says, I’ll be back.
When you're at the gym, work hard, but when you're not (and I assume you're not as you've read this far), check out some cool Unitree PUMP reviews.