You're the seven Africa Milani Early Breakfast.
Vincent diat Is, a personal trainer and fitness expert, turns me on the line. Now, Vincent, A very good morning and welcome to the show.
Good morning Africa. Thank you.
We're talking about bias remorts. Have you bought a product or service which, when delivered or when you experienced it, you realize actually this was not such a good idea.
Well, yeah, I mean I used to be a huge team fan, but I got a couple of things that were were not quite spital way I needed them to be so they didn't necessarily quit when they got here. But otherwise, generally, I mean, I'm in good spirts about the things that I.
Guess because you are very good at selecting the product of the service you're purchasing. Generally, except when you're on a teamor site.
Yeah, except when I'm on the team. Start I get a little bit biased. Happy when I'm on I tend to I tend to find things that I probably don't need as much as I think I do.
And for me, and I was saying this to row In a little bit earlier, that that is the problem with online shopping, Like you're sitting on your couch, You're going, oh, that might be nice to have let me w part my credit card and make the purchase.
No on exactly. I mean, it's like it's like when you're walking into whenever I go to Clicks or a disc and you know, I always live with the basket of things that I never knew what did need. I was and Mumbos the other day and I thought, you know what, what if I need another superware or another something.
You are a shopper's delight vincent.
I know you know I fall into that category.
Complete You and I could not be any more different. I'm the kind of person who, if I'm driving, will park next to the entrance that will take me straight to the area of the shop that I need to go into. And if I'm purchasing that one thing, I'm purchasing that one thing, and I'm bolting out of that shop. I don't get distracted and go, oh that be as oh maybe I needed. Actually some storage is.
A very carefully orchestrated situation when you go shopping.
Growth Absolutely anyway, we're talking about rest day workout, which which seems to be a contradictory right because rest day for me, means that you are resting and not doing a workout.
Yes, you know, it's a very underestimated a day of that's part of your workout program because you know you can. You know that there's a definitely importance that you should and absolutely do nothing. But a lot of people think that that's the reason, but you you actually have to. You have to to compensate for your workouts or the
type of exercise program that you were doing. So sometimes you know, a good active walk or a swim or a light yoga if you used to yoga, it's a good thing for your body because allows your body to recoup rate.
So then is the objective do some level of physical activity, but dial it down quite considerably as far as degree of difficulty and challenge is concerned.
Yes, definitely. I mean as far as the research is concerned, your body recovers better when it stays in movement, so you want to definitely die the movement down a little. Look those days on the couch with Netflix is a great idea, you know, every once in a while, really, and I do this to my clients quite often, As I tell you know, I don't want you to do anything tomorrow. And it's definitely a place in this in our world for that. But other than you know, it's
a good to form an active recovery. They call it an active recovery. So you want to get rid of the lastic acid build up in your body and your muscle fibers. They break when you're working out in a good way. It's supposed to happen, but you really want that to regenerate, and it's regenerating really like sports specific or exercise specific thing like stretching, you're keeping your joints, act of that type of thing.
So how do we know that I need to, as you suggest to some of your clients, do absolutely nothing but sit on the couch and watch streaming versus let me do some active recovery light mode workout.
You know, that's very important. It's very important to listen to your own body. But you overtraining is a definite thing in our industry. So if you're feeling the project, if you're feeling tired, if you feel like you're not recuperating from your workouts, if you feel like you're starting to get little leggles of injuries, then it's just be probably time to try and take a rest. Day just to do nothing, you know, laying on the couch for
that one day. It's actually going to be better for you than very life movement, but you'll definitely feel something is a little off, and that means like you're.
Overtraining, okay, And I suppose that sort of feeds into the next question of how often one should incorporate active rest day workouts, because if you know, there are people who go to the gym four times a week, for example, and obviously every alternate day they will not be going to the gym, they would know and listen to their body in order to find out whether they need to set on the couch and do nothing or do a bit of light yoga or whatever active choice that they exercise.
Yes, sir, you know. Also, once again, the science suggests that we do at least one to two days of active recovery or rest. But it all depends on how strenuous exercise activity is. You know, it's not necessarily gym if you're playing golf three or four times a week. If you're playing tenous three or four times a week, you know, the repetitive movement on your joints for that
specific sport is also quite hoss. So you want to definitely take a break and incorporate you know, one to two days, and then definitely sleep is very very important. You have to get you have to get a good six or seven hours of good sleep in an evening. So so it's very very important to do that.
Does it matter what, uh, I suppose what you're training for people who are training to run a Comrades marathon, for example, I imagine will need a different active rest workout day to somebody who's building weights, So who's building muscle and having to lift up weights.
Yes, it's very very different. So you want to keep if you're doing an active rest, if you're a runner, or if you and we call them if you, we call them fast switch or slow switch muscle fibers that you most use one exercise will do a fast switch muscle fiber predominantly and the other will be a slow switch muscle fiber, or stimulate a slowtwitch muscle fiber. Then you want to switch and and and your activity need to kind of replicate those in a much more subdued way.
That that would mean that you're that you're that you're that you're keeping the muscle active. But it's actually taking rest and then recovering from it. So really very It does definitely depend on what kind of sport you do.
And we see that quite often is that when when our clients, when they think they're having a recovery day, they would do something completely out of the ordinary, Like if you're not necessarily used to a younger class, it could be an actually very strenuous cost if your body is not used to that, So you can't really see
that as an active recovery. It's active recovery based on the muscles that you use and to stretch them and to lengthen them, maybe get a great massage and then go for a light walk outside or something like that.
I'm a great advocate for walking. I appreciate in order for one to feel that you've had a workout, there has to be some sweat. So walking briskly I think is a very good form of exercise and quite frankly, I mean, despite the weather outside can be joyous and rewarding.
Absolutely, it's great for your mental wellness too, especially if you go on a walk a little bit longer than you're used to. I mean, it just gets you, it just gets you out of your head a little bit into nature. It's a great form of exercise. And you know, one thing that I just wanted to bring up Africa
is that we overestimate an active recovery. You know, an active recovery needs to be about sixty percent of your heart rate maximum or even lower than that, which means that your rate of your perceived action, which this is what we call it, is that you're supposed to be
able to have a conversation while you're doing it. It's not supposed to be you know, a light sweat is great, but a lot of the times we think that we need to active recovery in a much more strenuous way and we have to kind of bring it down or not and be like, you know, you're if you're doing an active recovery or a walk or a bristwalk and you can still maintain a conversation, then that's perfect for you. And it's generally about let's take fifty percent of your heart rate maximum.
That's very good advice. Vincent, thank you for a time this Wednesday morning. Vincent Deacha is a personal trainer and fitness expert, talking to us about the importance of rest day workout