3 Reasons Why You Should Eliminate Rest Days | Jim Stoppani, Ph.D.

Chasing better gains and faster fat loss? Jim Stoppani, Ph.D., explains why ditching your rest days may improve your chance of better gains, and better health.

I'm a firm believer of whole-body training, and when it comes to better results, I believe it's important to train seven days a week.

Now, there's no reason to worry about overtraining, because the human body is designed to work every day without rest. With the right full-body training program, you can safely work your entire body—every day—without injury.

Below are three reasons why I believe eliminating rest days will improve your training results.

Reason 1: Better Fat Burning
Now, it's obvious that the more work you do, the more calories you burn, and therefore the more fat you lose. However, there's another trick resistance training has up its sleeve, and that's activating metabolic genes in muscle fibers.

When you train your muscles daily with weights, you activate these metabolic genes in those muscle fibers each and every day. This keeps those genes turned on and activated, so you end up burning even more fat every single day.

Reason 2: Better Muscle Growth
The research actually shows that with full-body training and training every muscle group each and every day, muscle growth and strength may be improved. This goes back to that same gene activation in the muscle fibers.

Activating genes involved in muscle growth and synthesis each and every day through resistance training keeps those processes of protein synthesis turned on, which can lead to greater gains in both muscle size and strength. By never taking a day off, those synthesizing processes stay turned on.

Reason 3: Better Overall Health
Once again, the key to better overall health may lie in daily gene activation through exercise. Those genes that are involved in metabolism are also involved in health outcomes. Activating those metabolic genes each and every day through daily training may help promote longevity, while lowering the risk of diseases such as depression, heart disease, cancer, and type 2 diabetes.

Those are my three reasons why you should eliminate rest days. Check out my Full-Body 5x5s workout for more information on full-body training.

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[UltimateHibz]

Best reason is that life will naturally throw rest days at you.
So no need to program them in

[qlwsuzd]

Stop it. The only reason he's saying this is because training 7 days a week leads to more protein, preworkout and BCAA sales.

[elgringiototote]

I've done two of Jims's programs, and they both hav rest days... lol

[vegastar]

People are over-reacting so bad here. If you train full body everyday you wouldn't be doing 5 exercises and 15 sets per muscle. And you wouldn't be training the same way. There's lots of variations, not everything is bicep curls. There's a way to do it correctly. Lots of athletes train everyday. It's not all about lifting heavy weights. There's so many things you can do to exercise full body everyday.

[CrisAndrei]

It is not a a rest day, it is a growth day

[kyle.drennan]

This guy would probably be bigger if he had a rest day

[sonnyethan]

"You are only as strong as your recovery." -Bruce Lee

[jefkoele-wijn]

I trained 7 days a week when I was 20-21 but now I train 6 days a week and I'm gonna keep it that way because my joints always feel better again after that rest day

[benebeer]

If you don’t need a rest day you probably haven’t worked out correctly.

[sebastianbucur]

I tried to workout 7 days a week and noticed that my immune system broke down because i kept getting sick every 2 weeks and i always used to be tired. It also depends on the person and their goals. This is just like telling people to "eat big to get big" same bs principle.

[terrymacom]

I do believe you can do a full body workout every day. Everyday in the am, I practice yoga, .in the afternoon I lift weights doing 18 sets. I am 71 years old, & have been lifting and pratice martial arts most of my life.

[HOTDOG-rlut]

I believe you can workout everyday, only with high intensity and low intensity days

[BigCheech-wyos]

Body is spose too work 6 DAYs aWeek.
“On the 7th Day He Rested!!!

[Acrossthehorizon]

I think this all depends on how hard you train each day. For example, a lot of guys in prison workout everyday or close to it and have great results. If you aren't going till failure maybe it's arguable you don't need as many rest days but if you are going to failure on all of your workouts everyday you definitely need the rest. 7 days seems like a lot honestly I would argue 5 days

[Mascorvus]

My reason to include rest days is for shoulder recovery. I got bicep and shoulder tendonitis from working out 6 days a week at medium to high intensity.
The body may be made to work out 7 days a week, but I sure know not to overdo it.

[sdn]

I actually feel better and stronger after a rest day. More energized and ready for the next workout. To many back to back I start to feel burnt out.

[adamrobinette]

I'm in agreement that you don't have to have an overabundance of rest days. I train six days a week in total between weight training and burst cardio. And usually on the seventh, I still do some sort of short yoga stretching. But I still take two full weeks off a year. Because for me it's not the muscles that are the problem. I do a lot of high intensity, lower volume stuff. So I fry them, I don't obliterate each muscle group with 30 sets a week. It's the joints and tendons that need the rest, though. Usually about every six months something starts to nag, most recently a tendon on my right shoulder. I don't want to half ass my program, so I just leave the gym for a week. You wouldn't believe how much your energy levels come back and how much more motivated you are at the end of it. I come back, see some new gains, and bust through strength plateaus every time.

[uhavemooface]

Not going to sell me on this bullshit. I work out 3 days a week right now. Going to start up four next month but I will probably stick with just four days a week. You need your rest days to recover and if you say you don't then your on some stuff.

[Joe...]

I used to train 7 days, sure I was in good shape. Ripped and muscular..once I started taking the weekends off, I made more gains than ever before....to each his own I guess