#27 - When To Rest and Take Breaks
Hey, Hey ladies. Welcome to Lady Sculp Lifestyle. It's been a while since I've kind of taken a minute before the podcast here and introduce myself a little bit, for those of you who are new to the podcast or just tuning in. I'm Lylas Leona, I'm your coach, I'm your head trainer, I'm a personal trainer, nutritional coach and life coach. And it is my mission to help women live a sculpted lifestyle, all of the time. That's what we're going for here. We're going to get out of the yo-yo diets. Get out of the on-off seasons and we're just going to embrace habits and routines and consistency in a way that helps us live a purposeful life in a body we love and a body that we're super fucking proud of. Excuse the F bomb, right at the beginning of the episode. It's just how we roll here.
All right. You guys. Let's start off by talking about. How beautiful the west coast weather is. It has been so sunny out this past week. I am loving getting outside in the afternoons and taking dude for walks and just breathing deeply. I have learned specially since I've moved back down to the west coast, back down the mountain from Whistler to Vancouver that I am a summer person. I do not like rain. I do not like winter, dark gray, depressing weather. Now I know, and I can work around it. I am so happy that marches here, flowers are starting to bloom, the days are getting longer. Who's with me, I feel like I'm re invigorated. I feel like my energy is coming back. I feel like my motivation, my inspiration. Like everything is kind of just feeling back up and it feels so darn good.
Let's go. Right. Let's do this. What else did I want to talk about? Oh, I also wanted to talk about this past weekend, was the first WNBF Workshop of the season in Vancouver. One of my fellow WNBF promoter advocate athletes, Chris Kwon hosted it. And I got to be part of it and help with some of the posing for the figure athletes. And a couple of my pro bikini athletes were down helping with the bikini girls and we had so much fun. It has been a long time since we've been able to kind of get together as a group with people outside of our little team Sculpt and be able to meet other athletes and laugh and share experiences and talk about competition and it was just such a good energy. I am so excited for this year's comp season. We are two months away from the Vancouver WNBF show. In less than three weeks, I'm hosting a workshop in South Surrey at sand castle fitness. Shouts out to sandcastle fitness. Y'all I started working out there about three weeks ago now, and it has my jam. I have found my people, my gym. It is such a well-equipped gym for aesthetic training. There are so many other bodybuilders they're competitors there and just it's a fantastic facility. So if you're looking for a gym, I recommend it, try it out. Come visit us. and if you're looking to get your feet wet a little bit, maybe try some posing or come here more about competition, more about the WNBF organization. You can register for the March 27th workshop, it's 50 bucks. You just go to WNBFcanada.ca. And you can register for my clinic there. Me and my athletes will be there and we're going to have some fun. It is Sunday afternoon, March 27th from noon to four. All right. Now that we've got all that out of the way.
Let's get into episode number 27, when to rest and take breaks. This is a really important part of training. You guys. We talked about this back in periodization, when I was talking to you guys about phasing your trainings. And I mentioned that, you know, phasing in a break on purpose is important, right. It's recovering, it's letting your body fully rest. And I want to talk about resting and taking breaks in two different ways today. First, I want to just touch on during your workouts. So rest periods as you're actually working out like between your sets. So in Lady Sculpt the programs that I've developed in there have set rest times. So if it's a workout that's designed to keep your heart rate up, it's more conditioning style workout. It's tempo mode. You may have very short rest periods, maybe 15 seconds to 30 seconds. Maybe no rest within the circuit, right. You're going back to back exercises and then arrest at the end of so many exercises or if it's a strength workout where you're doing five rep, max is finding out what your PR is, are you may be given up to two to three minutes of rest. Now, I want to talk about why this is, because I think it's important for you guys to understand and know the why when you're doing something, because it helps you understand what you should be feeling, why you're doing it. If it's important for you to actually do, or if there's ways to skim around it. So why we take rests is so that our body can recuperate. And produce more energy and produce more strength for that next set. So when we're doing heavy lifting, when we're doing strength training, the reason we take 90 seconds plus is because it takes our body that long to kind of restore our ATP, which is what our body uses for energy to perform and for our muscles to recover from that last set and be able to produce the same, if not more, sometimes. Right. Have you ever noticed sometimes your second set stronger? Especially with adequate rest. If you've taken adequate rest between strength sets, you should be able to do almost, if not the same amount of reps you did with the same weight from the last set.
Okay now, Hm for the women out there who are like me. And I know there's a lot of you out there. You don't want to be in the gym, sitting around for two minutes, twiddling your thumbs. Right. I don't like to look at social media. I don't like to look at my phone or do things when I'm at the gym. I like to work out and I don't want to sit there and wait two minutes. So what I do when I'm strength training, let's say I'm doing a heavy back day. And I'm waiting for my deadlift strength to recover. I've got a two to three minute break in between. I call this an accessory. What I might do is pick an accessory muscle group, something that isn't going to affect my back training. So maybe I'd pick abs or shoulders focusing more on my anterior or front delts or maybe. I might do some light glute medius training. So what this might look like is between my sets of deadlifts, maybe I popped down and do you know, 15 sit-ups. And that will take half of that rest period. And then with the other half of that rest period, maybe I'm adding some extra weights or having a quick sip of water. So you can add in accessory training sometimes. when I'm putting workouts together for my athletes, I do this on purpose for the athletes. I know that don't like to take that rest period. So a lot of times on a strength training day, I will superset. So maybe I'll have you do five rep max, heavy back squats. And then. 10 to 15 step back lunges for burnout. And then maybe 10 to 15 sit-ups as an accessory, and then only taking a 45 second rest rather than a much longer rest because your legs are getting that full rest period because you're taking that minute to do sit ups. Right. Does that make sense? So if you are doing a workout that requires longer rest periods and you don't want to, the muscle group that you're working probably will require that rest, but that doesn't mean that you can't work on something else during that rest time. If your goal is weight loss. Your rest periods are going to be much shorter because we're trying to keep your heart rate at a much higher iIntensity at much higher rates so that your fat burning during your workouts as well. So what this might look like is if you are trying to sculpt, if you're trying to increase your muscle mass and either maintain or lower your body fat. You're super sets might look like a heavy lift or a hypertrophy lift. Let's say 10 rep max bench press. Followed by something that's going to get your heart rate going. Like jumping jacks or box jumps or mountain climbers or something like that. And then a very short amount of rest, before going back into your next set of bench press. Does that make sense? If you guys have questions about anything I talk about on my podcast. You are always welcome to email me and ask, I will be doing podcasts to answer questions. I've gotten some really interesting questions in, and I've been keeping track of them and writing them down. And coming up, we will do a solely Q and A podcast, I promise. So if you have questions, sentiment. I want to hear them and I will answer them.
Okay. So that's during your workout, let's talk about rests and breaks from your workouts. So first off, I want to suggest some of you might be mad at me for this. I want to suggest you take at least one rest day per week from working out, minimum ladies. I know there's some crazies out there who like to work out seven days a week. You know who you are, I love you. I love your enthusiasm, but your body needs a rest. Now, what a rest day can look like is it can still include active living. Maybe on your rest day, you go for a hike, maybe on your rest day, you go and golf around and walk the course, maybe on your rest day, you take your dog out for a nice long beach stroll, maybe on your rest day, you go play some tennis. Active living is a hundred percent okay. What I'm suggesting is you take a rest day from resistance training. Now, if you're a tennis player arrest day may look like resistance training, taking a rest from playing tennis to resistance train. So it could just be a different style of training, but it should be less intense. Right. It should be de-load it a deloaded day from your regular day. And if you're in the gym six days a week, I highly suggest your seventh day a week, you take a break from the gym. Go get outside, do something different, go for a bike ride, do yoga, something different. All right now, I also suggest that you take one week per quarter break. What I know some of you are gonna push back on this and I'm going to suggest that it not be preferably not be a forced week. What a forced week looks like is when you're too stressed or too busy to work out or you're sick and your body is forcing you to rest. On purpose, plan a rest week into your quarterly training schedule. So what this might look like in Lady Sculpt is maybe you do the build, which is a12 week program. And then you plan a week of downtime or deloading, or rest before you start your next program. Okay. And you can do this really really purposefully. You can plan this in very strategically to be the week that you're on vacation or the week of holidays or a week that it is more stressful for you or you know, that your work is going to be increased. You can also plan your rest weeks while you're traveling, right? Like all sorts of different ways, you can strategically plan those rest weeks to serve you. And a rest week doesn't have to be like, I absolutely can't do anything except for sit on the couch. A rest week may include a ton of extracurricular activity and maybe is just a week off from the gym, a week off from resistance training, a week off from pushing heavy weights, just to give your muscle structure enough time to fully recover. And what you're going to notice is after only one week, you're going to go back to the gym and you're going to be excited to go. You're going to be ready to rock it. Your Strength is going to improve. You're going to be able to push more. And my friends you're going to feel some dumps. You're going to shock your muscle, which is how we make it grow. Right. Rest is so important for growth. I can't even emphasize that enough. If your goal is to increase your muscle mass, improve your strength, get stronger, got a take time off so important. When else should you take rest? I highly suggest taking rest after a stressful training season. So if you're in comp prep or if you're in marathon prep, or if you're training for an event of any sort, and your training season is longer than 12 weeks, like in comp prep, we take a minimum of 16 weeks then a de-load week or a rest week post comp is a really nice way to let your body kind of recuperate recover and then prep for your next training cycle, for your next training phase, for your next training period, whatever you want to call it. Okay.
Let's talk about. When you should rest and take breaks unplanned, when you haven't pre-planned it in when it wasn't strategically put in ahead of time. Ladies, if you are sick do not work out. If you're not feeling well, like if you're feeling run down. your sinuses are blocked. You're having trouble getting out of bed. Maybe other members in your family are sick. Know that your body is fighting your immune system is needed to fight off that bug. If you go to the gym, you push through and you train heavy. What happens is your immune system has to multitask. Now, it's fixing muscle tissue, repairing muscle tissue. And fighting off a bug and there is a way higher chance that bug is going to win that you're going to end up getting sicker. If you try and push through, your resistance training when you're not feeling well. So I have a rule of thumb that I use with my athletes. If you are sick, period, you don't work out. Don't get other people sick. Don't work out at home rest. If you're sick, sleep that's the fastest way for your body to recover, to get better. As soon as I start to feel. Like, I'm getting sick. First off, I take Canadian ginseng, north American ginseng. It's the best thing you can do for immune system. I sleep as much as possible and I just let my body fight. And then as I come back from feeling that way and I'm starting to feel better, move into cardiovascular training. First, when you can do 20 minutes of moderate intensity cardiovascular training without coughing up a lung, without aving an asthma attack, without having an adverse reaction or stopping and having to catch your breath, you know, you're ready to wait tray. Okay. You have to feel about 80% better to get to that place where you're adding in the cardio and then when you can do the 20 minutes of cardio, usually I do about a week of cardio and then I incorporate the weight training packet. And don't feel guilty about this, understand that your immune system can only handle so much. It's the same, if you've got a crazy stressful week, if you are going through it at work or you're going through a crazy, stressful divorce, your immune system, your adrenals can only handle so much. So you may need to lower the intensity of your training. So that you're not pushing your body to the point of adrenal fatigue, chronic fatigue, pushing it to the point of exhaustion and not immune system coming down, compromising it. And you then getting sick because of how much pressure you're putting on your system. So be compassionate with yourself. I know that weight training and exercising is a great stress reliever. And it can be, but understand that weight training and exercising is causing physical stress to your body as well. So as much as it is a mental stress reliever, it is also stressful for the body. And you just want to be considerate to yourself. You want to be ware of how much you're asking your body to do at a time. Right. You can do it all, just not all at once. That's one of my favorite quotes. All right. What else?
I like to plan my rest days with my menstrual cycle. So if I look at my week and I'm like, oh, okay, Thursday, my period's supposed to arrive, Imight plan to have my rest day that week on the Thursday. First day of my period, I never feel like going and doing a heavy workout. And honestly, those few days, right before my period our great de-load days. They're great days for lighter cardio for yoga, for lower intensity lifting. So maybe shoulder training or core training and then once my period started, I'm good to go again. And you might be a little bit different. Everybody's body's a little bit different, but getting to know your body and being able to work with your own natural cycles is a beautiful thing. When I plan to take a rest day, the day of my period, I am so grateful to my past self for planning that for me, when I get to my day of my period, I can take that day guilt-free. And just take care of myself, have a nice hot bath. Maybe spend some time reading on the couch and just really focus on self care. Other reasons you may want to take a rest or take a break from your workouts could include, if you feel like you're not fully recovering from your workouts, if you're still really sore or experiencing. 48, 72 hour dom's you're noticing you're not seeing progress as much with your strength or with your gains. Like if you're going to the gym and you're not able to lift as much as you did the week prior or you're not seeing results your muscle, isn't building as fast as you think it should or if you're going for weight loss and your scale has stopped moving. If you're not losing weight and you should be, your macros are on point, there's a chance, my friend, that you are over-training.
Take a look at. When was the last time you took a rest? So these are great indicators that your body needs a rest as well. I know it's the opposite of what we think we should do when we stopped seeing results, we're like we should train more. It's not always the case. If you're not sure if you think you might be over-training or you think you might need a break, but your brain is saying you're just being lazy, email me. Tell me about your situation. Tell me about how long you've been training, what you've been doing at how you're feeling. And I will give you some guidance. I'll let you know. I will give you permission to take a break. Sometimes we just need permission. All right. And the last thing on my list, for when to take a rest or take breaks is if you find that you are no longer enjoying your workouts as much as you were. So if you, you used to love working out and now, you're finding that it's a little bit daunting. You're not enjoying it as much or resisting a bit more. You're not looking forward to it. It's a sign that you might need a break. Just the little one, maybe even just focusing on doing something different physically with your body for a few weeks or a month, maybe you go practice a martial art. Maybe you take up a new sport. Maybe you just shift your focus for just a little while and then incorporate resistance training back in as an accessory to that new sport and see how you like it. Sometimes we just need a new focus and that is totally okay. If it will bring you back to a place of enjoying it, that's ideally where we want to be. Sometimes when we first start resistance training, we don't enjoy it. And I always tell my clients, just give it eight to 12 weeks. You will fall in love with how it feels to work your body. Especially if you're doing it right.
That is what I have for you in episode 27. Have a fantastic week, my friends. Bye for now.
