Taking A Christmas Break From Working Out Is The Best Idea; find out why

During the holiday week when we are busy preparing meals, spending time with family, shopping and partying, exercising usually takes a back seat until things return back to normal. Taking a break from your workout routine is not a bad thing, so don’t feel guilty you don’t have time to hit the gym or go to your yoga class. You’ll more than make up for it in the New Year.

Days off are definitely encouraged by trainers and fitness professionals alike to let both mind and body recover. Long-term training can cause muscle damage or even inflammation in the body, so taking a break every once in a while and using exercise time for something else is actually beneficial.

Moderation should absolutely be paramount, and the harder you push yourself, the more important it is to take a break.

This is something along the lines of meditating 20 minutes a day if you have enough free time and meditating 60 minutes a day if you don’t.

Build-up fatigue takes time to pass, but once you decide to return to your exercise routine, make sure you do it slowly.

Our strengthening, muscle building and fitness level increasing actually don’t happen while we work out. They happen while we rest.

The workout serves to elevate our heart rate, break down muscle fibers and secrete hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, but we actually “get fit” later, when our body responds to the stimulus.

The body’s response to stimulus comes when we eat and rest, giving it a chance to repair muscle damage, strengthen the heart and other muscles, increase oxygen transportation throughout the body and overall grow stronger. This is precisely why it is important to occasionally take a break from exercising and leave the body to do its work.

Taking time off from exercising during the holidays is not something to feel guilty about. Using that time to do other things while the body works on getting “stronger” should definitely be enjoyed.