Rest & Recovery Days – BowlFit Fitness Tip of the Week

This Week’s Topic: Rest & Recovery Days

In the last 8 years, I have spent training clients and coaching teams. I have noticed that people have forgotten the importance and purpose of rest days. Bowlers especially tend to not want to take days off from bowling or the gym- myself included! We live in a generation where we equate working hard to the amount of time spent doing things rather than the quality of the time spent. I recommend that everyone has at least 1 day a week that is a designated rest day. This doesn’t mean that you spend the day being a couch potato and not doing anything at all. I recommend an active recovery day in which you engage in physical activity that isn’t very strenuous but improves circulation- walking, restorative yoga, or swimming. Other than these, you can even try other recovery methods such as a Hydration Iv Drip Therapy. This gives your body a chance to really recover and repair itself in order to prepare for you next week of training and practice.

Without rest days, it is very easy to end up over training and suffering from chronic fatigue and overuse injuries that take a great deal of time to heal from. Other great options to consider on rest days are steam rooms, saunas, jacuzzis, foam rolling and massage therapy. These modalities can increase blood flow and help bring nutrients to the muscles in order to speed up their recovery time. Foam rolling and massage therapy are especially useful for keeping muscle tissue healthy by breaking up adhesions that are built up over time and relaxing overworked and tight muscles before they become injured.

Check out this video on foam rolling which can be incorporated daily and is especially helpful for rest days: