Training streak - healthy or trendy?
Working out every day is good for lots of reasons, both physically and mentally. A way to increase your motivation could be to decide to do some form of physical activity every day, like running or testing a new form of exercise. The expression "run streak" means that you run at least 1.6km every day (on English mile), but you could just as well change from running to f.ex. a yoga streak or a training streak where you mix activities.
But can you get too much of a good thing, is it really good to train every day?
The answer to that question depends a little on what type of training you are doing, and what amount you are used to previously. Getting started by adding physical activity to your agenda every day is great. In that way you don't need to negotiate with yourself if you should train or not, the decision has already been made so you can just get started.
Build your body slowly
If you are not used to regular exercise and want to get started running, it is wise to start slowly and only run for as little as 5 minutes per time and increase from that. Your body needs to slowly adapt in order to not get injured, and if you run slowly in the beginning the risk is quite low. But if you only perform the same training the risk for injury increases. Therefore, you should mix different activities like running, yoga, strength training.
In order to maximise the effect of your training and reduce the risk for injury, it is also important with recovery. With recovery we mean letting your muscles rest, getting enough sleep and filling-up with energy through a varied diet. If your body isn't getting enough recovery, there is a risk your performance will go down, and not up, and your body can become over trained. There are elite athletes that have never recovered from becoming over trained and it is definitely something to be taken seriously.
So, is training every day good or bad?
Yes, if you can avoid putting too much pressure on you body and train in a varied way, making sure to get enough recovery.
About the authors Jessica & Maria
Challengize health tips are written for us by Jessica Norrbom and Maria Ahlsén, both with PHDs in medicine. Since 2013 they run their own business Fortasana working mainly with diet, training and health from a scientific perspective. Maria and Jessica have written several books and regularly lecture focusing mainly on popular health myths and explain what is actually true from a scientific perspective when it comes to diets, trends and newspaper headlines.