Take a Rest

By now, we all know how important “sleep” is for our bodies.  The way I explain it to my kids is, the moment we fall asleep, little workers in our body starts working on anything that needs attention.  If we don’t fall asleep, they don’t get to work and we end up overusing our body - regardless of how old we are!

So now let’s take that “sleep” concept and apply it to our workouts.  Just like our whole body needs a rest, in the form of sleep, our muscles also need a rest, in the form of “taking a break”.  When you overuse the same muscles over and over again, doing the same activity, the muscles fibers don’t get the chance to repair themselves.  Eventually, they either get super fatigued or, even worse, injured.  Therefore, rest days are very critical.  Those rest days don’t only help with the muscle fibers but they also help with the emotions.  Resting creates a boost for the future activities, both mentally and physically.

The month of February was very special for me and for my family, because we were able to take one weekend off from skiing.  And the best part of it was that it was not planned.  It was a last minute decision and therefore, we didn’t have the chance to plan anything else for the weekend.  We ended up doing “nothing” and truly resting.  It was an amazing morale boost the following weekend when we pulled into the resort.  For a change, the kids were not complaining and the parents (Derek and I) were filled with energy to ski with and without kids.

Just like sleep being critical for your health, taking a break from time to time is also very important to be able to reset.  Amazingly enough, the body learns how to quickly recover when you allow it to take a rest.

I hope you all prioritize your rest as much as your sleep.  Hight Five to you for letting the recovery happen!

when we take a rest, we build a bowling course from legos

We can also take a rest by playing with the snow. Can you spot Ela?