How to Design the Perfect Rest Day

What do serious athletes and everyday people have in common? They need rest and recovery from their workouts in order to make progress. Here are the most crucial rules to guide your rest days!

Think of your physical training like a megaphone that’s blaring messages to your body. “Grow muscle! Lose fat! Improve your conditioning!” What the workouts are saying is important. But it’s also loud and intense. And if you never take a rest day, the noise level can get so high that your body can’t understand the message anymore! 

This is why experienced athletes like IFBB Fitness Pro, CPT, and SteelFit Athlete Lauren Estes put just as high a priority on their rest as they do on their training. “Rest and recovery is truly the epitome of fitness,” she says. “You simply can't have growth without recovery – they go hand in hand!”

It’s easy to read this message, but a lot harder for many of us to put it into action. Does a rest day mean we just have to sit on the couch? What about all those supplements – do I take them on rest days, too?” Here’s how to navigate the rest day puzzle and see it pay off in the gym, and the mirror.

Rule #1: Get to know the “semi-active” rest day

Talking about rest days always seems to bring up analogies. Estes’ preferred image is of a car. “Recovery is what fuels your body to revamp and restart,” she says. “It’s like an oil change for your vehicle. Your body requires upkeep in order to keep its engine running smoothly!” 

So does that rest day have to consist of nothing but… rest? Not according to Estes. “I’m a bodybuilder, runner and fitness instructor,” she says. “That can mean that I strength train 4-5 times, run three-ish days, and teach four or more classes every week.” Someone with this level of energy couldn’t sit on the couch all day even if they tried!  

But rather than sink into the sofa, Estes is a huge advocate of what she calls a “semi-active rest day.” 

“I always aim to have one day that’s completely free of strength training and running,” She says. “On this day, I’ll just focus on getting a minimum of 7,000 steps, getting all my meals in, hydrating properly and focusing on my sleep schedule.”

This is also the day where she’ll treat herself to self-care like: 

• Deep tissue massage

• Infrared sauna

• Epsom salt soaks

• Stretching

• Icing her face or body 

By the time she gets to her weekly rest day, Estes is ready for it! And when it’s done, she’s ready for whatever comes next. “My rest days are critical to my ability to perform all the other days of the week,” she says.

Rule #2: Still take your “non-negotiable nutrients” 

Make no mistake: Sweating is healthy for your skin, for a number of reasons. It helps cleanse and exfoliate your skin and increase blood flow, which can help to nourish your skin and improve skin tone. 

However, having rest days where you don’t pour sweat can have benefits for your skin, too! A big one: it allows your skin to hold onto its internal moisture rather than sweat it out. And it allows you to utilize moisturizing ingredients without having to worry about rubbing or sweating them away during your workout or post-workout shower. 

Of course, getting the most out of this approach requires you to be just as diligent about using moisturizing topicals and recovery-promoting supplements as you are on training days. 

That’s why Estes keeps two running lists of nutrients: those that are for training days only, and what she calls “non-negotiable” everyday essentials for both training and rest days: These include: 

• Steel Fit + Tone Total-Body Toning Lotion
• Steel Burn Liquid L-Carnitine
• SteelFit Creatine Monohydrate Gummies
• Steel Fuel Vegan BCAAs
• Joint support nutrients
• Vitamin C
• Elderberry
• Magnesium 

“I use the majority of my products in the AM, but follow all showers and soaks with Steel Fit + Tone moisturizer,” she says. “No exceptions!”