How Balancing Rest and Activity Improves Your Health
Balancing rest and activity is essential for keeping your body strong and functional, but too much of one or the other can negatively affect your health. Sometimes, it’s hard to know if you’re doing too much or not enough.
I am Lauren Masi, physical therapist and board certified orthopedic clinical specialist. I’m also the owner and Clinical Services Director of Lafayette Physical Therapy and Bay Area Physical Therapy. Today, we’re going to talk about how balancing rest and activity improves your health.
Too Much Rest Can Weaken Your Muscles
Oftentimes, we’re asked, “How much is too much activity?” or, “Am I doing more harm than good?” To start, we know that being sedentary can definitely cause more harm than good. It can lead to weakening, shortening, or tightening of your muscles. It can also lead to weight gain and an increased BMI as your caloric output does not exceed your input.
A lot of people end up sitting all day, especially now working from home. And a lot of the time people can come in for physical therapy saying, “I’m just not getting outdoors. I’m not walking as much.” This leads to tightness in their hip flexors. We need to make sure that we don’t let some of the increased sedentary behaviors negatively affect our body.
Another problem we see is when you’re too sedentary, you’re not getting that cardiovascular conditioning your body needs. This decreases the function of our lungs and our heart, putting us at risk for other systemic issues.
Constant Activity Can Lead to Overuse Injuries
On the flip side, over training can also be detrimental. This leads to overuse and sometimes injury to our tissues. If you are doing too much activity and not allowing yourself time to rest and recover, our bodies will let us know, right?
Our tendons might get inflamed, our knees might start to hurt, our back’s going to start to hurt, and we’re going to end up seeking help to make sure that we get back on track as quickly as possible.
A Good Balance of Rest and Activity Can Improve Your Health
Here’s a tip: if you go to the gym and you do your upper body one day, your lower body the next, that alternating of upper body and lower body inherently provides a day of rest between each muscle group you were using. Now, do we have to stick to that exactly? Certainly not. But we do want that balance. We want to make sure that we’re diversifying the exercise program.
Some days you’re working more on your cardiovascular fitness, maybe going out and taking a walk, or if you’re a runner going for a run. But you need to make sure that you’re maintaining flexibility and strength. Does that mean you have to go into the gym? No. There’s tons of body weight exercises that you can do in the comfort of your own home.
The point is to balance what types of activities you’re doing and what parts of your body you’re working to ensure you don’t injure yourself from overuse.
Schedule a Consultation at Bay Area PT
The take home message of today is, there needs to be balance between rest days, activity days, and also the types of activity that you’re doing. We want to aim for that good balance so that you do not injure any of your tissues, which would sideline you from the function that you want, whether it is just with daily activities or returning to your sport.
If you would like help optimizing the function of your body and making sure you are in good balance, please reach out to our office at (925) 284-3840 for a complimentary consultation.