Physical Rest
Physical rest is what we typically think of as rest. Sleeping, naps, stretching, yoga.
The biggie for athletes or active folks to take note of is that one of the signs you need physical rest is increased muscle pain or soreness. If you’re tired and your athletic performance is suffering, you can’t solve that problem by increased training. You NEED physical rest.
Active rest through Pilates, Yoga and Stretch Therapy paired with passive rest through naps and days off will change your entire training game.
Mental Rest
Mental rest means we are giving our brain a break from constant stimulation and allowing for breaks between intense bouts of intense mental activity. This can be practicing meditation, taking social media breaks, going outside and practicing good time management skills. Expecting our brains to fire at 100% for 100% of the time can actually increase mental fog, frustration, annoyance, irritation, trouble sleeping, and just being totally overwhelmed by normal everyday activities.
Why The 7 Types of Rest Matter to Pilates Native
Pilates Native is built around 3 pillars: Rest, Recover and Restore. Rest is the very first pillar! Here’s why Rest is so important to our training.
1) Overuse injuries are rooted in over exertion. Injury prevention is rooted in good rest.
If you are always tired, your training is going to suck. If you listen to conventional wisdom and train harder, faster, heavier to get those gains while also skipping out on rest and recovery, you end up physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted.
If you aren’t able to properly refill those rest and recovery buckets, that exhaustion quickly leads to burn out, compensations, improper muscle engagement/recruitment. Those things lead right to INJURIES. (guess who runs an injury recovery and prevention space?!?)
2) The nervous system and its function are paramount to proper training. If you’re overstimulated, your training is going to suck because your brain is already fried and struggling to keep up.
3) Movement is medicine. Everything in the body is designed to move. Movement helps get the blood flowing, the lungs expanding, and the synovial fluid lubricating through the joints. Like a motor that’s designed to run and rusts/corrodes/rots when it sits too long, our bodies need movement to keep us healthy. Pilates, Yoga and Stretch are all amazing ways we can move to heal our bodies.
Pilates Native provides rest in these ways:
If you go through each graphic, you’ll see the various methods for getting the different types of rest. Here, I’ve highlighted how Pilates Native supports the different rest types.
Physical Rest: Yoga, Pilates, Stretching, Breathing Techniques, and Muscle Release Techniques
Mental Rest: Yoga, Pilates, Breathing Techniques, Focus (no multi-tasking!)
Emotional Rest: Providing a safe place to take a break from shame and judgement from current movement patterns, injuries, body stuff, mental health stuff. Promoting clients enforcing boundaries and helping clients find their power in saying NO!
Social Rest: Providing a community of folks with similar interests.
Sensory Rest: Focus (No multi-tasking!), soft lighting with big bright windows, beautiful blue and gray walls, quiet and clean studio space to work in.
Creative Rest: Allowing yourself to move with curiosity and explore where those movements lead.
You know I totally spreadsheeted this info
While creating graphics and posts for each of the rest types, I noticed that many of them shared rest modes. In my obsession with spreadsheets and efficiency, I decided to spreadsheet the 7 rest types and how to get them, with overlapping methods highlighted.
The idea was that by focusing on the modes that covered the most rest types, I’d get the most efficient approach to rest. Interestingly enough, the three biggies were taking social media breaks, going outside and taking breaks throughout the day from various things.
In the midst of this rest study and figuring out how to best schedule social media breaks, my phone died, forcing a massive disconnect from the modern world. 5 days without a phone while running a business, having a spouse out of town and getting a kiddo back to school was an interesting experiment. Random troubleshooting scenarios, I enjoyed a lot more down time and slept a whole lot better the week w/o a phone, so I’ve been trying to be a lot more intentional on phone use and screen limits.
If you want to check it out, you can download my super low tech spreadsheet and take a look at all of the different modes of rest. It’s an 11×14 size, there was A LOT to include. As always, I’d love to hear from you! Which rest mode resonated most with you?
Talk soon!
-R