One rest day a week is the floor — walk on it, but do not mow the lawn

A no-days-off mentality might have short-term benefits, but it tends to put you at risk of injury in the long run. That is a hard thing to swallow if you love training and have goals staring back at you — but rest days are a must, not an option.

How many rest days?

As a general rule, everyone should take at least one per week. As with anything in training, the precise answer depends on your individual programme.

The key is not the count itself but how intensity is distributed through the week, in a way that allows for adequate recovery. One coach's example arrangement runs: high intensity, low, high, low, moderate, high, rest.

Where the rest day goes depends on how you like to train. For some it falls at the end of a string of consecutive training days. If you prefer to keep your foot on the gas all week, resting every other day keeps you fresh and lets your body adapt to the work.

What can you do on a rest day?

One distinction first: rest days are not the same as active recovery days. Active recovery includes lower-intensity, non-strenuous movement, whereas on a rest day activity itself is at a minimum.

That does not mean lying down all day. It is worth getting a minimum of 4,000 steps in — walking promotes blood flow and the delivery of nutrients for recovery. Meditation, breathwork, a massage or light stretching all fit here too.

Why rest at all?

• Avoiding overtraining — without rest, the benefits of exercise (better mood, sharper memory, more energy) get overshadowed by fatigue and reduced reaction time.
• Reducing injury risk — accumulated stress and overuse lead to injury. Strategic rest days reduce the strain you carry.
• Making gains — training causes micro-tears in muscle fibres, and giving them time to repair is what growth is built on.
• Mental recharge — the toll training takes on the mind is real too, and rest days are what prevent burnout.

How this relates to your strength score

A relative strength score is calculated from Big 3 one-rep maxes, so how recovered you are on testing day becomes the score. And there is a common mistake around rest here: resting only in the last day or two before a max attempt while pushing hard for the weeks before it.

That gets the order backwards. A day or two does not clear accumulated fatigue. If you want a new number, hold a weekly arrangement that already includes rest for several weeks, then reduce load at the end. How to structure that final week is in tapering, and how directly recovery moves the numbers is in sleep loss and lifting performance.