Why Training Breaks Make You A Better Athlete

Many ambitious hobby athletes underestimate regeneration and even have a guilty conscience when they take short breaks from training. Relaxation is important. So get comfortable regardless of your choice of mattress types. Let’s find out why, when and how much?

Secrets of Elite Athletes

MYou surfaces Simply drop a break! A break from training, a short one. Relax. That doesn’t mean that you can’t move. What sounds so simple confronts many athletes – whether in the hobby or performance area – with a conflict of conscience. Can you really treat yourself to the break? The more training, the better – or not? No, the equation is by no means so simple.

Many people underestimate the topic of regeneration in everyday training. A guilty conscience gnaws at them when they take a short break on the way to their destination. “Regeneration sometimes stands in the way of athletes’ motivation,” says Malte Krüger, a sports scientist with a degree from the German Research Center for Competitive Sports in Cologne (Institute for Circulation Research and Sports Medicine). “But the breaks are essential for regeneration. A guilty conscience is out of place. ”

Why is it so important for athletes – whether top athletes or amateur athletes – to give their bodies breaks too?

From a training science and purely physiological point of view, it is the case that the body regenerates during the break and adapts to the stress. During this time, energy stores are replenished and the body adapts, because we also train to get better, to put it simply – to gain more strength or endurance. And such an improvement is linked to the physiological changes mentioned – and these do not occur during training, but during the break.

The training workload is very individual. But is there a rule of thumb about what percentage of athletes should incorporate regeneration?

It depends a lot on how much experience an athlete has with training, i.e. whether it is an ambitious amateur athlete who trains regularly three to four times a week, whether it is a professional or someone who is new or start exercising again. The less experience the organism has with the stress to which it is exposed and the more intense the form of stress, the longer the regeneration times. One trend, for example, is EMS training ( electrical muscle stimulation, the editorial team ), which triggers very sore muscles after the first few applications because they are unusual loads. The regeneration breaks are significantly longer.