2021 can still be your fittest year yet.

So 2020, it hasn’t been the greatest year has it, Coronavirus has seen to that. Here in the U.K., most of the country has been stuck at home for large portions of the year, since the beginning of Nov the government has enforced a nationwide lockdown that’ll (hopefully) end at the beginning of Dec. It’ll depend on whether the rate of infections has come down enough, I’m not getting my hopes up to be honest, I think I’ve become really cynical because of this mess.

Anyway onto lighter hearted things! I’m talking about the title of this blog ‘Rest now and reap the rewards’, what does it mean?

Before I get into it I want to point out that henceforth I’ll focus more on blogs in my chosen subject (that being fitness), then as a reader you’ll get more out of them. I think I was going down the road of, basically, writing blogs that sounded like philosophical waffle! I was getting too deep into a realm that I knew little about, at the end of the day ANYONE can have opinions on how we should live etc. Basically, shut up Mark focus on what your good at fella!

So reversing a little, how do we rest now and reap the rewards in 2021? I’m glad you asked, so here’s the thing…

Exercise, in whatever guise that you like to do it, be it simple aerobic classes twice a week, Strength training in a gym or sports specific stuff, whether you like it or not hugely fatigues the body. Regardless of what intensity you train at, it depletes your systems at a fair old rate and now is the time of year to look at that. A bit like a recharge-able battery that never gets enough time to fully power up, your body and mind could be in this half-charge state if it isn’t given enough time to rest and recover, especially in these Winter months.

As well as draining your body and mind, exercise also puts strain on joints, tendons and ligaments. These areas of the body have a very low blood flow, so unlike your skin when it gets cut and heals rather quickly because of having a good flow of blood, ligaments and tendons if overworked and under rested can get damaged very easily and take years (if ever) to heal back to how they were.

The last point I’ll make about resting is that it is CRUCIAL in getting better at something and it helps in keeping your interest in exercise lasting long term. Think about studying for an exam say, you don’t simply study non stop without having a break do you? Our brains aren’t capable of functioning and absorbing without rest, the body is exactly the same. If you simply train train train until your tired, then train train train some more, you’ll ‘plateau’, this means you’ll level off, never hit your peak performance and maybe get bored of what your doing.

So have a ‘rest period’ in your year, train smart and not with your heart. Every Dec, for the last few years at least I’ve taken my foot off the gas and only cycled very easy for the whole month, I’ll also mix it up and go for some light jogs, do yoga and try anything that I find fun that is zero effort. Remember it’s all about recovering and letting your body and mind adjust.

I’ve not always trained this way, for years I myself thrashed and bashed away with little thought to my recovery. It took age and knowledge for me to stop and think; ‘ Ok, I’m spending longer and longer time now feeling exhausted and not getting the results I want in races, why is that?’ It was, basically, because I was a dead battery!

The difference I’ve seen in my cycling fitness has been massive, I arrived in 2020 fresh and ready to rip up the local cycling scene, sadly it didn’t worked out due to Covid, but that’s not the point. The rest did my legs a huge amount of good and not only that, it also helped my mental state too and the break from cycling meant my passion was burning strong come January.

It’s weird, you’d think that by resting and doing something totally different you’d lose a lot of your fitness and strength and whatever. In some ways you do, but this blog isn’t about hitting peak performance (that should come in Spring/Summer) it’s about smart training so you CAN hit peak performance, get it? A rest period gives you that pause so that peak performance can be achieved with your refreshed body when you need it, and you definitely don’t need to be killing yourself in the depths of Winter either!

This method can easily be adopted to whatever exercise you like to do. The benefit to a strength training athlete are also huge as one of my clients has seen already. He was ‘training blind’ and simply thrashing himself without any easy workouts in his week, since he’s been my client I’ve given him 2 easy workouts a week and he’s actually gotten stronger as a result! He is able to snap out a few more pull ups with his fresher arms, and above all tells me he now relishes and looks forwards to his tougher workouts because he is rested and ready for them.

So, like the message on the attached pic of me racing around a cycling circuit in 2019 (ahh the memories) – YOU CAN! Allow yourself to rest, give yourself permission to take the training monkey off your shoulder and just….chill! It’s ok to rest and lose a little bit of your fitness and strength, the body actually demands it. Believe me, the older you get and the more you ignore this advice, the less and less gains you’ll get back in this game of diminishing returns. So let’s all rest, come back stronger, hungrier and above all ready to take on 2021 for our best year ever. Train smart everybody!