The Importance of Rest

By Team Beachbody

Have you ever heard the phrase: your body only gets stronger while at rest?

If we gauge the answer based on questions that have been circulating on the message boards, chances are you haven't. Now, sure, if you never exercise then worrying about rest is not nearly so important. But because we spend most of the time motivating each other to exercise more and harder, perhaps it hasn't been emphasized just how important it is for your body to rest if it is going to get stronger.

When you exercise, your muscles contract over and over. You also put stress on your joints, tendons, and ligaments. All of these actions cause microtrauma, which means-more or less-very small injuries. This resistance that you have put yourself through causes your brain to rebuild the body stronger than it was before. And this process takes time.

Here are a few rules to live by:

1. More is not better - Many of us start exercising and it feels so good we just want to do it all of the time. We keep getting letters from people that want to know if they will get better results from doing both a cardio and a strength-training routine everyday. This will not work because you want ample time to recover after a strength-training workout before you tear your muscles down again.
2. Working out makes you weaker, rest/recovery makes you stronger - At the end of a workout you are weaker than when you started. As you rest, you grow strong. For a period of rest you will keep getting stronger, after which you will gradually lose strength. The trick here is to workout again just as you peak. This is why it's important not to overtrain. Overtraining means simply that you are exercising too intensely or frequently for your body to recover.
3. You need to sleep! - Overtraining can also be caused by lack of sleep. Now, and this is an important distinction, your body will require more sleep before it can learn to require less sleep. When you start an exercise program, your muscles are torn down in a state that they are not used to. To counteract this you need to get effective sleep, meaning REM sleep. People have written in saying they expect to be fitter and require less sleep and Power 90^® is causing the opposite reaction. Well, this is normal at first and it is important that you realize this and try to plan for it. More sleep early on will bring faster results. Once you get used to the program, you will have more energy and require less sleep. But this state needs to be earned. (Editor's note: This incredible stuff is researched and contributed by Steve Edwards. Steve is one of Beachbody.com's message board fitness advisors and author of the majority of our newsletters. We are very lucky to have his expertise on our team. Now excuse me while I go take a nap.)
4. The post-workout meal - Next to breakfast, this is your most important meal of the day! You have a window of opportunity after you finish your workout of about 1 hour in which your body will absorb nutrients as much as 4 times better than at any other time during the day! This is a huge benefit that you should really take advantage of. The reason for this is that your body's glycogen stores (blood sugar) are low and need replenishing quickly. For this reason you want to get some sugar during this time-the only time of day that you need sugar! For this meal you should try to get 20 to 30 grams of sugar and about 60 to 100 grams of carbohydrates total. You should also get 10 - 20 grams of protein (this is variable based on body weight and intensity of exercise). There are many supplements made for this meal, but an easy substitute would be a bowl of cereal with skim or soy milk and a banana (for the sugar). Making sure that you eat during this wind