Break from the barbells: How harmful is missing the gym?

Although some fitness buffs wax lyrical about the benefits of hitting the gym each week without fail, it is not actually exceedingly harmful to skip a week if need’s be.

Due to our working culture, we tend to sit for long periods of time and suffer joint pains as a result of our lifestyles.

Have you ever noticed that when you miss the gym for a week and then return back, you are extremely sore the next day after your workout? For most of us, it may even take a couple of days to recover. The soreness is mistaken for muscle fatigue, which we all presume is good right? Wrong.

That soreness is most likely the muscles that where tight in the first place from us sitting down and all we have done was make them even more sore and tight.

Imagine you have a rubber band, now tie several knots in that rubber band. What happens when to pull it out to stretch it? It’s not going to be very mobile and chances are it may snap! This is the same situation with our tight muscles when we have developed knots.

Simple tips to avoid pain

So, to conclude missing the gym isn’t so bad, the best ways to return back more mobile is by applying some Mysofascia release to those tight muscles, which helps increase blood circulation and facilitates the delivery of more oxygenated blood to the working muscle. The mobility in your joints as a result become less restricted which, allows you to move more freely through movement and exercise.

Therefore when you return back to the gym you won’t have to deal with soreness over the next couple of days and most importantly you will be working your body from a more efficient standpoint. This simply means that blood circulation has increased to the right muscles, allowing your joints and and ligaments to become more mobile.

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Fitness expert Vahdaneh Vahid can be reached on Facebook and Instagram.