Rest days

[Spence]

I love to train and hate taking complete rest days, however I know how important they are for recovery. I run a PPL split and usually take a day off after 2 or 3 consecutive workouts. Instead of taking a complete rest day, would it be fine to use those days to hit biceps abs and calf’s? These are muscle groups that get deprioritzied and are at the end of my workouts taking away from output/progress.
Do you think placing these on my “off days” will have a negative impact on recovery?
Are those complete rest days from weights necessary?
Or would it be fine considering they aren’t as fatiguing / taxing ?

[Joe]

Spence wrote:

I love to train and hate taking complete rest days, however I know how important they are for recovery. I run a PPL split and usually take a day off after 2 or 3 consecutive workouts. Instead of taking a complete rest day, would it be fine to use those days to hit biceps abs and calf’s? These are muscle groups that get deprioritzied and are at the end of my workouts taking away from output/progress.
Do you think placing these on my “off days” will have a negative impact on recovery?
Are those complete rest days from weights necessary?
Or would it be fine considering they aren’t as fatiguing / taxing ?

This will be a case of “try and see”. The most foundational principle behind Hypertrophy is the idea of “stimulus and recover”. And both are individual depended. Personally I’ve made some of my best progress training g 10-12 session per week. And at other times, need 2 full days off per week (5 sessions total) and can barely recover. So: it might be fine, it might not. Try it. Measure progress/other lifts/scale, pictures, etc. evaluate and decide

[Anonymous]

Spence wrote:

I love to train and hate taking complete rest days, however I know how important they are for recovery. I run a PPL split and usually take a day off after 2 or 3 consecutive workouts. Instead of taking a complete rest day, would it be fine to use those days to hit biceps abs and calf’s? These are muscle groups that get deprioritzied and are at the end of my workouts taking away from output/progress. Do you think placing these on my “off days” will have a negative impact on recovery? Are those complete rest days from weights necessary? Or would it be fine considering they aren’t as fatiguing / taxing ?

I hate to say this but if you train on a rest day, then it’s not a rest day. What you are not considering here is that it’s not just your muscles that need to recover but your body (including nervous system) as a whole.

Are rest days necessary? I mean if you never feel like you actually need a rest day it honestly makes me wonder what does your training look like if you never feel like having to take one? But who knows perhaps you just have a super resilient body.

Do I have anything against for not having them? I guess no if that’s the case but I would keep an eye on how things are moving and if you start noticing signs of progress getting compromised then back off a little.

[Author]

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