Hello Reader,

Welcome to Vol. 030 of The Endure EQ.

Every week you'll get a deep dive into a topic related to endurance training, maximizing your potential or reaching peak performance. Read past editions.

Let’s jump in.

The Rest Day Playbook

One of the biggest lessons my athletes learn is how to take a full rest day each week.

There is a culture of training everyday without any breaks. Which is a big mistake in my opinion. Especially because, rest days are one of your most powerful tools in your recovery arsenal.

Using them properly can take you from:

Under-recovered ➔ high-performer

But only if you use them.

Here are the big 5 Reasons why you should be taking a rest day.

Your body needs it
They maximize gains
They lowers stress
They allow you to manage life
Allows you to manage niggles

Let’s go deeper.

5 Reasons why you need to take a rest day

Your body needs it

Think back to the endure Eq:

Training + Rest = Performance

You need both sides of the equation in order to continue to train. it can’t be all grind no rest. That’s a recipe for disaster.

Rest maximizes gains

Rest and recover allows the body to adapt to your current training load.

You get stronger because of the rest. When you train you actually break down the body a little bit and then after you rest you come back a little bit stronger. This is the idea of super-compensation.

You max out the gains by allowing time to rest.

Lowers overall stress

All stress is interpreted the same way.

A rest day allows for a mental rest. A time to check in with how everything is progressing in multiple areas of life. Rest days are great for physical and mental stress relief.

Breaks are key for sustaining your training.

Allows you to manage life

Having a regularly scheduled break away from training makes it part of the routine.

Which allows you to manage life as well:

House work
Laundry
Errands

This is really important with long-distance training.

Manage niggles

A rest day lets you respect and check in on niggles.

Niggles can creep in when load gets too high. A rest day lets you take care of them before they become a bigger issue. Often just by resting and taking a slight unload.

No extras needed.

How to take (actually) a rest day

Now that you know why you should be taking a rest day. Let’s make things more actionable and plan out when to add in a rest day.

There are 3 principles when it comes to taking rest days:

Schedule 1 day
Have a 2nd floating day
Use metrics to guide when to rest

Let’s break this down:

Have 1 regularly scheduled rest day

And on this day, actually rest.

Don’t:

Squeeze in another session
Do all the heavy yard work
Run errands all day

This defeats the purpose.

Take 1 day completely off and allow your body to recover.

Have a second gimme day

In addition to your consistent rest day, allow yourself a floating rest day.

Things happen and you won’t always feel great. Insert a floating rest day as needed. Knowing that you have the option to take an extra rest day takes away the guilt associated with resting.

Don’t feel guilty for resting, your body needs it.

Use metrics to guide rest

3 things you can look at when planning a rest day:

TSB
HRV
Overall feeling

Look at the trends in these numbers:

1 outlier day = reduce intensity
2 outlier days = rest day

How this works for me:

With my current training I take Friday’s completely off from training. And then I watch my metrics to decide if I need a second “easy day”. That floating day for me might be a walk, hike or some yoga. But it’s a break from SBR.

A Professional Speed-Skaters Approach to rest

You can learn a lot from professional athletes. Some of what they do is unattainable for us average athletes but some of it has valuable insights.

Nils van der Poel is one of the GREATEST long-distance speed skaters. And wrote a masterclass on recovery and training prior to the 2022 Olympic games.

His recovery came from training on a 5-2 split.

He almost exclusively used a 5-2 training split (training for 5 days; resting for 2). In his words “My rest days were usually during weekends. In that way I could spend the weekends doing fun stuff with my friends.” He choose to live as normal a life outside of training as possible.

Prioritizing mental and physical rest.

And he wasn’t afraid to take extra rest.

Nils became very aware of when he was digging too deep. In his words “I took extra rest days early on, instead of digging the overreach pit too deep and not being able to keep up the quality of the sessions.”

Quality always wins.

I wrote more about his approach in this Twitter Thread.

Recap

You should be taking a rest day because your body needs it, it maximizes gains, lowers stress, allows you to manage life, and gives a chance to rest niggles.
An approach to rest days is to always have 1 scheduled, and then have a second floating day. Use your metrics to guide when to take the 2nd day.
Prioritize both mental and physical rest. Spend those days doing something else you love.

Thank you for being here!

- Chandler

When you’re ready here are 3 ways that Excel Endurance by Chandler Scott can help you:

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The Endure EQ

Endure Eq 030 | The Rest Day Playbook