Does taking a day off make you better?

Another breakthrough came when I stopped focusing on adding up all my weekly milage and each week being higher than the next. If your exhausted this week and can't do 70 then don't force it and do 60. It's not about doing high or low milage, it's about doing the right milage.

Same thing goes for workouts. Don't worry about your workout times from today being faster than last week. The goal is that your race times from today are faster than your race times from last month or last year.

They don't give out gold medals for the people who run the most weekly milage or do the hardest workouts.

Dingler wrote:

Yes. Other than increasing my milage, my biggest career breakthrough came after adding a weekly rest day. Recovery is just as an import component of balanced training as any other aspect.

Again, it makes YOU better. It does not make me better. Don't act like what works for you will work for me or anyone else. Yes, recovery is very important. You can recover and still run on a given day as long as you go slow.

If you have an injury that inflames when you take a day off then you should be taking a lot more than one off.

It is quite manageable to run every single day if you'd like. You just have to modify your schedule and the lengths of your runs. However, I think the point of this thread is that taking a day off does not have any negative impacts, which is definitely the case.

What about once you have tried taking more time off (say 30 days) and that doesn't help? What if you only have the pain when you skip a day? What if you can run 30, 60 or 90 days in a row pain free and the only way you know you are not perfectly healthy is if you take a day off?

I am certainly NOT saying everyone should run 7 days a week to get better. However, the question that started the thread is more than does a day off have a negative impact, it was will the day off make you better?

I never used to take a specific day off each week, but I would take unscheduled days off when I felt they were needed. But with a scheduled day off each week I've found that I don't have as many mediocre workout days and the body does seem to get into a groove after a few weeks. I did notice at first that I had to have an easier day the first day back initially like many posters indicated.

canadaaaa wrote:

However, I think the point of this thread is that taking a day off does not have any negative impacts, which is definitely the case.

This is hard to decipher. Are you agreeing or disagreeing that there is not a negative with taking a day off?

Do you mean a day off of running/training or a day off of LRC? If former, no. If latter, yes!

haha YO wrote:

I don't take days off and I won't belittle you for not running every day, as long as you're feeling good and training hard who cares?

yeah I dont care what people do, but if you are streaking rather than sticking to solid training principles you've lost focus on your training. Suddenly you've become "a streaker" and you're focus is now on getting in that daily run, rather than taking time to recover from a hard bout, an injury or sickness, etc..

I take one day off a week, but I hate the idea of taking two. So I understand where you're coming from for sure.

EZ10Miler wrote:

yeah I dont care what people do, but if you are streaking rather than sticking to solid training principles you've lost focus on your training. Suddenly you've become "a streaker" and you're focus is now on getting in that daily run, rather than taking time to recover from a hard bout, an injury or sickness, etc..

I take one day off a week, but I hate the idea of taking two. So I understand where you're coming from for sure.

I agree, I hate the idea of running just to keep a streak alive. As I said though, a day off hurts me. I've done the whole one day off a week and I run better when I run every day. If it is absolutely needed (injury, sickness, etc.) I will take it off. Usually after a long season I will take a day off as well.