Active Recovery is STRAIGHT BS! I DEMAND you REST on REST DAYS!!!

I used to think that active recovery on rest days was a good idea. I was dead wrong.

I'll keep it simple. This study shows that active recovery is total BS. Even just thinking about it logically, exercise is only building up fatigue, and fundamentally, the best way to rest the body is literally to REST. 

This means that REST days should not be composed of micro-workouts OR cardio sessions (both of which some consider 'active' recovery). These rest-day sessions have NOT been shown to increase recovery speed or performance in trained athletes, and could potentially INCREASE the body's fatigue!!

In my opinion, the ONLY acceptable forms of 'training' on recovery days are (1) mobility work and (2) rehab work. Since both of these need to be done at fairly high volumes to actually be effective, it is acceptable to do a bit of this work even during rest days. Plus, most mobility and prehab/rehab work won't disrupt homeostasis as much as a 30 minute Zone 2 cardio session will. 

I'm not sure where the idea of doing zone 2 work/"active recovery workouts" on rest days came from. The reality is, if you are training hard enough, you SHOULD be LOOKING FORWARD to your rest days! I think this notion that rest days must involve exercise just came from bored gymcels who wanted to spend more time in the gym. As long as you don't sit inside all day, your daily movement (ie. NEAT) like walking to work, working, moving around the house, doing chores etc. will be more than enough to stimulate your body whilst allowing for full recovery. If you literally have a job where you do not move for hours on end, 10-20 minutes of walking (zone 1) could help.

So how many rest days should you have? Like most questions, this depends. However, for all athletes I train, they usually have 1 or 2 rest days. According to the literature, event experienced athletes need at least 1 full day of rest per week. However, for intermediate athletes or those in weightlifting, I prefer 2 full days of rest, and even 3! But 1 rest day is a sure minimum.