According Peloton tread instructor Marcel Dinkinswho has a background in track and field and trail running, it is determined by the form of walking you do.
When to take a rest day from walking
While walking is clearly slower and fewer intense than running, that doesn’t suggest it’s without its challenges – or the flexibility to get your heart rate up. Dinkins says the best way you walk determines whether or not you would like a rest day.
“I’m within the wheelhouse doing what’s best to your overall well-being,” says Dinkins. “While walking isn’t a high-impact activity, there’s cumulative physical and mental stress added to our physiological and mental strain from all our training. I feel this needs to be something we should always consider when planning our training sessions.”
In general, walking is usually considered a type of lively recovery. However, in case you are walking fast or walking on a slope for prolonged periods of time (as in the fashionable 12-3-30 workout), one of these activity will be classified as heart rate training.
“Walking to easily get your each day amount of exercise versus walking to satisfy a goal will give our bodies different responses,” explains Dinkins. “The latter will come at the next cost and stress to your body and needs to be something you’re taking a break from now and again.”
Rest days are also for mental health
By taking a time without work from our each day walks, Dinkins encourages all of us to contemplate our mental health as well.
“When you concentrate on your workouts, take into consideration all of you,” he says. “Are you only slightly lethargic or are you mentally high? Keep a diary and write down how you are feeling. Notice the patterns in how your mood ebbs and flows. This way you may know when you have to take your foot off the accelerator.”
(Love the concept of journaling how your body responds to exercise? Wellness Journal paper, $35, has space to jot down notes about activity, sleep, gratitude, soul nourishing meals, and more.)
If you discover that you just’re just exhausted, be kind to yourself. Making your time without work, harder, will only stress you out more. If you would like slightly extra encouragement (and permission) to take a seat back and chill out, keep this in mind: “There’s little or no, if any, added physiological profit to doing a totally mentally fried workout,” says Dinkins. So in case you feel the necessity, take a time without work from walking. The road (or treadmill) shall be waiting for you tomorrow.
