Are you supposed to exercise every day or have rest days?

[naomi83mother]

I’m very new to exercise and planning to workout via you tube work out vids 30 min a day. I’ve read not to do it every day as not brill on your body?! Is this true?

I think it's a grey area - there seems to be arguments for and against. I don't think there is proper guideline or a right or wrong. It's what works for you. Personally I think main thing is if you've really pushed yourself with an intensive workout one day, the next should just be a moderate workout - so it's kind of a rest day but still active IYSWIM?

Rest can include gentle exercise of lower impact.

When you exercise you damage your muscles. They tear on a minute level, and the reaction to this is why you ache afterwards. The only way to repair these tests is to allow them time to heal. Rest days will allow this. Only then will you get stronger/faster/fitter. There’s also an argument that your body needs to recover from the stress exercise puts on the nervous system, thus you need rest days.

The big thing for me with rest days is that they let m exercise without becoming obsessive. You see people stressing because they’ve “missed” a workout and they become obsessive. This is not healthy. Exercise is intended to make us healthier not cause more stress.

TL;DR take rest days. Your body and soul need them.

If you’re new to exercise then start with 30mins three times a week and build up later if you wish. On a daily basis, make sure you have s healthy lifestyle, good food and walking about a lot etc.

Build up the frequency slowly but 30mins a day shouldn't be problematic once fit.

When I'm training for a race etc, my rest days are just gentle rather than no exercise.

I thought that it depends on how vigorously you exercise. Gentle, and you can probably do it every day. More serious, vigorous full body exercise would want rest days. If you are weight training, you could do legs one day, upper body next day.