Days Off??

Thanksgiving was a few weeks ago so my family and I headed up to the mountains to play in the snow during our well deserved time off from work. 

A few days before we left I realized that I would be faced with a dilemma: For the previous 6 weeks I’ve been getting up everyday at 4:30am to workout. For the first week or so it was hard to get up that early, hard to workout and hard to continue to train Jiu Jitsu 4-5 days a week. 

Around week 2 it became much easier and by the middle of the week it was just my new normal. My body felt great, I wasn’t tired, I was sleeping better and it wasn’t hurting my BJJ game. 

I began to feel better and better. I felt stronger, had more energy and my increased cardio from the morning HIIT workouts was starting to show itself on the mats. After the first few rounds of sparring I noticed that I was still thinking clearly, still seeing opportunities and not breathing nearly as hard as those I was sparring with. 

Because of these results I kept with my morning routine and was #upbeforejocko everyday. But now with a Thanksgiving vacation looming I was faced with a dilemma. Do I get up at 4:30a while on vacation with family or do I take a few days off and let my body relax? 

The Wednesday before I was still unsure so I put up a poll on my Instagram story asking my followers if I should workout on Thanksgiving or take the day off. 66% of those that responded told me to take the day off. 

I discussed it with my wife and she agreed, I should take the day off, so I did. Thanksgiving morning I woke up at 4:30 but was able to go back to sleep and I slept in until 7a! Honestly it felt great, I felt genuinely rested and ready to enjoy the day playing in the mountains with my wife and daughter. 

Luckily I didn’t use my day off to sit on the couch and watch football. We found a trail and ran around the woods for a while followed by cooking hotdogs and smores by the campfire. It was great. After lunch my wife and daughter went back into the cabin so my daughter could color but I was starting to feel antsy. 

I had to do something with all of my pent up energy so I decided to chop some wood for the fire using a small hatchet I keep in my car’s emergency kit. That burned off some energy so I went inside and played with my daughter. Later that day we went for a long walk to check out the area and just enjoy being outside. 

For dinner I grilled some steaks and had a few beers. I remember as I was walking upstairs to the bedroom thinking whether or not I should workout the next morning. After a little internal back and forth I decided not to workout for the rest of the weekend. So I officially fell off the wagon and took Thursday, Friday and Saturday off. 

There was a break in the weather on Saturday so we decided to come back a day early rather than try to drive back home on Sunday during a snowstorm. This gave me the opportunity to get back on track and workout Sunday morning, so at 4:28a on Sunday my alarm went off and I worked out again. 

Except something felt different on Sunday. I felt slower, the workout felt harder and I was wiped out afterwards. This was something I hadn’t experienced in quite a while but I pushed through and rolled with my professor at 10a later that day. I felt the same thing during my lesson, we were working on guard retention and some lasso guard techniques.

As we were rolling I started to feel winded, would forget my next move and didn’t have my usual reserve tank of energy. It’s almost like I went back to square one after only 3 days off! When I got home I started doing some research about resting your body, rest days and what the top athletes do. 

Most things you’ll find out there tell you that you and your body do need to rest days but then I started reading about top Crossfit athletes. Regardless of what you think about Crossfit, those top athletes are in ridiculous shape. It turns out they do “active recovery” days. As do many other top athletes like marathon runners. 

All of this got me thinking about taking days off and if it’s really necessary. It’s now been two weeks since my Thanksgiving break and I’m finally back to where I was before I took those days off. 

After lots of research and some testing on myself I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t need time off. Yes, there may be some days where I go a little easier, but going forward no more days off from my morning workouts. 

Those of you that do Jiu Jitsu are probably thinking “if I roll 7 days a week I might die or at least have to get around in a wheelchair”. I’ve found that since I started rolling 5 days a week that I actually feel better and I’m not as sore the next day. In a future experiment I’ll try rolling 7 days a week and let you know what I find. 

For now I’m sticking with my 7 day a week 4:30a workouts and BJJ 5 days a week. Hello Christmas Workout!