I recently injured my back. While I am not sure of the extent of the damage, it has caused me to ease up on my workouts. In fact, when I first injured it, I had to take five days off altogether. This really upset me. I am at this point quite a gym rat. I enjoy my time there and was unhappy that I had to give it up for a while.

My recent time off from the gym cased me to think about times when it is OK, and actually beneficial to stop working out. Here are three:

When You Are Injured

I was disappointed when I could not go to the gym. However, it is better to deal with a litter disappointment. Why? Because it actually gave me the time to recover.

The other option that I had( and have seen many people take) is to push through the pain and workout anyway. However, to do that is to risk serious injury.  Because I stopped working out as soon as I hurt myself, I was able to limit my vacation to five days. Many who try to push though the pain hurt themselves severely and have to spend weeks, even months, and sometimes years away from the gym.

When You Cannot Recover

Getting injured is not the only time you need to recover. In fact, you need to recover from every workout. Why? Because every workout is doing damage to your body. In fact, the workout it self does not help you get fit. You get fit by recovering from your workout. The best way to recover from a workout is to rest. And the best rest is sleep.

So here is the situation. If you cannot get an adequate amount of sleep, you are better off to skip your workout.

When It Stops Working 

Finally, there are times when you simply stop getting results from your workout. You can change thing up a bit. For example, If you do cardio two days a week and weights tree days a week, switch. However, even this stops working after a while.

This is due to the fact that our bodies get use to the same workouts or the same types of workouts. Eventually, you just stop seeing results. The best thing to do in order to get out of this slump is take a week off. Then, when you go back to the gym, you body handles it like a new activity.

Closing Remarks

Like I said. I hate missing my gym time. However, I love getting and staying fit. The reality is in order to stay fit, sometimes you have to miss a workout out or a weeks worth of workouts. Don’t be hard on yourself. In the end, you will be in better shape because you did not workout.