Importance of rest day - Dashiell Hall

I paddle around 4-7hrs 5 days a week. Feeling sore after paddling is quite common in the shoulders back core, and even hips, it is important to take time off to allow my muscles to repair themselves and for my body to rest off fatigue.

If you don’t take a rest day after multiple days of kayaking straight, it can lead to overtraining symptoms, this lead to increased body fat, your mood can also become be more moody in general. Your chances of injury are also reduced by resting so you have a lesser chance of that shoulder injury acting up. To much training can mess with your sleep
it can also help your immune system. It allows you to relax, socialize with your friends, get something done (like your laundry, blog or maybe give you some time to cook up that spicy new freestyle edit to show all your friends all your hard work), or free up some time to pursue another one of your hobbies

What to do during your rest day:

You can either passively rest or actively rest. Active rest may consist of doing light physical activities like throwing a football or playing spike ball. Active recovery increases blood circulation, which helps remove waste products from soft tissue that have been broken down by intense exercise. Fresh blood flow then delivers nutrients that help repair and rebuild muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Passive rest is when your just chilling, watching a movie, or scrolling through tik tok. Another super important part of passive rest is sleep, most muscle repair and growth happens during that.

So if you want to see those paddling gains, or don’t want to feel sore or super tired the next day when you go back to paddling make sure you grab a lot of sleep, go to bed early or take some naps in your free time

Overall even if you don’t want to take that weekend rest day, you should - since you’ll feel better in the long run. You’ll be able to get more out of coaches on the water, have more fun, get more gains, and be happier in general. So take that rest day as a blessing to make you a better kayaker overall, be more attentive, happier, less tired, be able to do and learn more on the water.