“Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” is one of my favourite running songs. But if I had to amend the lyrics to make them a little more recovery-friendly, I’d probably change them to something like: “Ain’t no rest for the wicked…except for maybe once every seven to 10 days to ensure proper muscle recovery and optimal response to training stimulus.”

Of course, I can understand why Cage the Elephant didn’t choose that line for the original chorus. But even the wicked get tired sometimes. And when that happens, the wicked take a rest day.

…when I take a day off, I don’t always come back feeling as refreshed and ready to go as I expect…

Unfortunately, I’ve found that when I take a day off, I don’t always come back feeling as refreshed and ready to go as I expect. Sometimes, I’ll return the next day and actually feel worse—not significantly worse, but my legs may feel a little stale or flat, like they’ve lost some spring. Other times, I will actually feel pretty awful: sluggish, sore, achy, and tired. The exact opposite of how a rest day is supposed to make you feel.

“It’s kind of a mysterious thing, but it’s common,” says Michael Joyner, MD, who studies the physiology of athletes at the Mayo Clinic, speaking for himself and not the clinic. “You hear it from people in the middle of their taper all the time: ‘I feel horrible. How am I ever going to be able to run fast come race day?’”

Thankfully, most of the time, these are normal ups and downs of training, and there’s no cause for alarm. But that knowledge doesn’t necessarily make dealing with the uncertainty any easier. Here’s what you can learn from fatigue and how to combat it.

Why You Feel Sluggish After Rest Days

1. Muscle Tension Temporarily Decreases
Jason Fitzgerald, a certified run coach and creator of Strength Running, explains that the sluggishness we sometimes notice post-rest day has a lot to do with muscle tension.

When we take a day off from running, the tension in our muscles can decrease. “Your muscular coordination and your muscles’ ability to absorb and release energy get slightly compromised,” he says. “It’s almost like losing a little bit of muscle memory, you’re not quite as economical or efficient.”

Obviously, that loss of coordination is only temporary until we get back into our routine. But it’s also not how we ideally want to feel going into a race or important workout.

2. Full Recovery Takes Time
The main thing to remember is that we don’t always feel fatigue right after a hard training stimulus. “It takes longer than just 24 hours to fully recover; that is to get all the glycogen back into the muscles, and to heal the slight damage and inflammation from training,” Joyner says. “Sometimes it takes a couple of days for that soreness to go away, and sometimes it’s actually worse 72 hours versus 48 hours later.”

Joyner explains that research falls short of a complete explanation as to why these responses happen because the contributors to fatigue are so multifactorial and vary in how much they affect each runner.

Fitzgerald takes a similar stance. “Fatigue can be sort of like delayed onset muscle soreness,” he explains. “Sometimes it plays a little catch up.”

For example, you might do your 32km long run on Saturday, and find that you actually feel fine later that day. Then, when your weekly rest day rolls around on Monday, you wake up feeling sore and a little lethargic. The rest day didn’t necessarily reveal the fatigue, Fitzgerald explains. Sometimes it just takes a little while for fatigue to come online.

3. You Simply Feel Down
Running is a mental sport. And sometimes, feeling worse after a rest day can be a little psychological. Joyner explains some runners feel a bit of a letdown after they’ve just completed a heavy training block or hit a new peak in weekly mileage. For some, it can almost be like a smaller version of the post-race blues.

Additionally, we may feel worse because we’re not getting our usual dose of the feel-good and performance-oriented neurochemicals that running provides, which include adrenaline, noradrenaline, and serotonin, Joyner adds.

4. You’re Out of Your Usual Rhythm
Another thing at play is the disruption of your routine and normal daily rhythm. Runners are creatures of habit, and sometimes, missing a run affects the familiar cadence and flow of your day, which can affect your outlook and motivation.

“Maybe you’re usually a morning runner, but now instead you’ve slept in a little more, and you just feel a bit sluggish getting your day going,” Joyner says. He likens it to what’s sometimes called a “sleep hangover,” when you wake up from a nap or extra sleep and feel groggy and disoriented. “Some of it is really just being out of your typical routine,” he explains.

5. You Might Be Under-Fuelling
A sneaky culprit of post-rest day fatigue can be under-fuelling. “One of the things that can happen during long training blocks is that you can become a little bit energy-depleted,” Joyner says. “So eating a little extra can really help.”

Even if you are meeting your energy needs with enough calories most of the time, being short on fuel a few days a week can add up over time. This can leave you feeling tired and worn out. Joyner recently gave this advice to a colleague who regularly trains at a very high volume and felt unusually fatigued. After about a week of intentionally adding more food to his meals, his colleague reported back that he felt much better.

Tips to Overcome Fatigue After a Rest Day

1. Increase Muscle Tension With a “Priming” Day
Fitzgerald says there are a few things we can do to maintain some muscle tension on days off. They’re the same practices many athletes follow on a “priming” day – the eve of a big workout or race – to help ensure the neuromuscular system is firing.

He recommends drills that involve a little bit of pounding on the legs, such as A-skips, where you’re really driving your foot into the ground, and dynamic warmup exercises that focus on keeping your cadence high and feet moving quickly. Some good options include high knees and butt kicks.

Follow those with a short and easy shakeout run on a hard surface like the road or sidewalk. Fitzgerald says you’ll want to avoid surfaces like soft dirt, sand, and grass because they don’t as effectively facilitate the tension you want to keep in your legs. Finally, round out your priming day protocol with some strides at around 800-metre or kilometre race pace.

2. Turn to Active Rest Days
If you’ve been feeling off after rest days, Joyner suggests trying the concept of “active rest” instead of taking the day completely off to chill on the couch. He defines this as doing about a half or a third, or anywhere between 30 and 50 percent, of your normal workout. Some of this looks just like Fitzgerald’s priming day routine.

“Warm up like you’re warming up for a race: do a few strides, jog a little bit, and then do some stretches. Or, get on the bike and do some low-resistance pedalling,” he says.

I told Joyner that I usually like to go for an easy 20-minute stroll on my rest days, but that it doesn’t always seem to help. Joyner says some people may need slightly more of a stimulus. “I think 15 minutes of walking is fine, but why not try 15 or 20 minutes of easy jogging?” he suggests.

3. But Make Sure You’re Getting Enough Downtime
All that said, you want to make sure that your active rest days stay restful. The point of these days is still to recover, not get in a mini workout. “The keyword here is still rest. The goal of the active rest session is to feel better when you finish than when you started,” Joyner says.

It’s also important to pay attention to how much time you spend on your feet, even if it’s very low intensity, like taking a long walk, which can harm your next workout, Fitzgerald explains. “A lot of walking or standing around saps a lot of that muscle tension, and can cause you to feel really flat the next day,” he explains.

The most important thing, though, Joyner says, is that if you’re feeling bad after a rest day, don’t freak out and don’t beat yourself up about it.

“Develop the concept of active rest in your own training plan, eat a bit extra for a few days, drink plenty of fluids, prioritise sleep, and see if you feel better,” he says.

This article first appeared on the Runner’s World USA website.

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