Do You Take Turkesterone on Rest Days? 3 Benefits of Taking Rest Days
Turkesterone is arguably one of the safest fitness supplements out there. You can take it for extended periods with minimal risk of adverse side effects. Recently, fitness experts using the supplement have figured out a way to make it even more effective by giving their bodies a chance to recover from continuous strenuous exercise.
However, one question remains: Do you take turkesterone on rest days? Read on to find out.
What Is Turkesterone?
Turkesterone is an ecdysteroid produced from a plant called Ajuga turkestanica. It’s also found in various other plants where it plays a major role in protecting them against environmental stressors, such as cold temperatures and UV radiation.
The steroid hormone is quite similar to pure testosterone in terms of its chemical structure and anabolic effects. Like testosterone, turkesterone may promote muscle growth and increase strength, endurance, and athletic performance. It may also boost protein synthesis and prevent muscle breakdown.
However, these two steroid hormones share a few differences, particularly in how they interact with your body and their potential side effects. Unlike testosterone, turkesterone doesn’t affect your body’s hormones. It also doesn’t interact with your organs and tissues, so some users won’t even recommend post-cycle therapy. Instead, turkesterone works by supporting your body’s natural growth process, leading to a lower risk of developing side effects like with anabolic steroids.
What Are Rest Days?
In any exercise regimen, more exercise often means better results. But exercising too much without giving your body a chance to rest might actually work against you. With time, you may find yourself unable to work out as long as you used to or lacking the motivation to work out altogether.
Although turkesterone has performance and endurance-boosting effects, you’ll still experience stress and strains all over your body after supplementing with it and exercising for extended periods.
To alleviate some of the stress and strains, you need to take a few rest days. Rest days can take different forms, including complete rest, active recovery, or low-intensity workouts.
- Complete rest: This typically involves abstaining from any form of exercise-related physical activity. These activities involve everything from high-intensity workouts to lifting weights and running for long distances.
- Active recovery: This involves engaging in low-intensity workout routines aimed at aiding recovery by increasing blood flow. Active recovery rest days can involve anything that doesn’t put additional stress on your muscles. For instance, you may choose exercise activities like light walking, swimming, or cycling.
- Low-intensity workouts: These are an extreme form of active recovery. They involve gentle forms of exercise aimed at maintaining your fitness without putting undue stress and strains on your muscles. Some examples of low-intensity workouts include Pilates, yoga, and gentle stretching.
What Happens When You Take Turkesterone on Rest Days?
Taking Turkesterone supplements on rest days does not have a significant effect on your body’s muscle-building and recovery process, but it presents a few health benefits. Turkesterone functions to support growth and repair actively. These two elements, coupled with turkesterone’s muscle protein synthesis boost, are crucial during your rest days when your body needs all the help it can get to heal and grow. This way, you get to bounce back to your exercise regimen faster and stronger.
Taking turkesterone during your rest days may also prevent muscle loss, especially if you take extended periods of rest.
What Happens When You Don’t Take Turkesterone on Rest Days?
Failure to take turkesterone on your rest days should not have a significant effect on your body, especially if you constantly engage in light exercises to maintain your lean muscle gains. With that said, some people use turkesterone as part of their post-cycle therapy to strengthen their anabolic pathways.
Since it is not an anabolic steroid, turkesterone supplements support muscle growth and recovery without affecting your body’s natural testosterone production. As a result, you get to retain your muscle mass and other turkesterone benefits without getting the negative side effects experienced with taking anabolic steroids for extended periods.
Do You Take Turkesterone on Rest Days: Benefits of Taking Rest Days
1. Allows Time for Recovery
Rest days aren’t just about relaxing and taking some time off the heavy lifting. They’re also about giving your body a chance to recover and grow stronger. When you exercise, your muscle tissues get microscopic tears that cause them to become sore. During your rest days, fibroblast cells repair these tears, causing your muscles to heal and grow bigger and stronger, building muscle mass.
Additionally, your muscles need the energy to do all the heavy lifting, pulling, and any other strenuous activity associated with working out. To get this energy, your muscles typically store carbohydrates in the form of glycogen, which is subsequently broken down during workout sessions. Taking a few rest days gives your body time to replenish its glycogen reserves for your next workout.
2. Improves Performance
Working out on consecutive days without resting can leave you feeling tired and unmotivated. With time, it becomes more difficult to challenge yourself or even complete your regular routine. Eventually, your performance decreases, and you get slow reaction times and reduced endurance.
By taking a few rest days, you replenish your energy supplies, which prevents fatigue, leading to consecutively successful workouts.
Prevents Muscle Fatigue
Rest days are important since they prevent exercise-induced fatigue. Regular exercise, even when using fitness supplements like turkesterone, causes microscopic tears in your muscles and depletes glycogen levels. This leads to muscle fatigue and soreness. However, by getting plenty of rest, you give your muscles a chance to heal and replenish glycogen levels, thus preventing muscle fatigue.
3. Supports Overall Health and Well-Being
Rest days are crucial for your overall physical and mental health. They give your body a chance to repair worn-out muscles, replenish energy reserves, improve sleep, and strengthen your immune system. The result is improved mental health and general physical well-being.
What to Do on Your Rest Days
There’s no one size fits all solution when it comes to rest days because everyone spends their rest days differently. How you spend your rest days comes down to what you plan to achieve and your general lifestyle. With that said, there are a few general guidelines that could help you get the most out of your rest days. These include:
Eating a Balanced Diet High in Protein
Your body generally needs fewer calories on your rest days since you’re less active. Therefore, you don’t need to eat more to achieve your calorie limit as you do on regular workout days. Instead, listen to your body’s natural hunger cues.
While you’re at it, you need to watch what you eat. During your regular exercise regimen, you deplete important nutrients in your body that are vital for your full recovery. One of the most important nutrients to focus on is proteins. Proteins support muscle growth and general body repairs.
Besides proteins, you should also take plenty of carbohydrates, vitamins, and water. On average, you need about 1.2 to two grams of protein per body weight kilogram per day and three to 10 grams of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight. You’ll also need to take plenty of fruits and vegetables to replenish your vitamin and essential mineral salts supply.
Yoga
Yoga is one of the most effective yet overlooked activities on rest days. Although it does not support rapid fat loss, it is an excellent exercise for improving body awareness, flexibility, and breathing. It can also help you build core body strength by loosening your muscles for a more relaxing effect.
Additionally, yoga promotes relaxation. After just 10 to 15 minutes of yoga, you’ll feel calm, relaxed, and ready for your next workout.
Low-Impact Workout
Low-impact workouts are a great way to maintain fitness and prevent decreased muscle mass during your rest days without overstressing your body. They also serve as a great pastime for fitness enthusiasts who need a subtle rush to keep them going. A few examples of low-impact workouts include walking, swimming, kayaking, and dancing.
Signs You Need a Rest Day
1. You’re Too Sore
Feeling sore is a regular part of any workout routine, especially if it’s particularly intense or new to you. This type of soreness is known as delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) and usually peaks about 48 hours after your routine. However, this soreness may persist longer. If it lasts more than a week, even if it’s just a few weeks, you should take a few days off the rack to give your body a chance to heal.
2. You’re Dreading Your Workout
Most fitness enthusiasts can’t wait to hit the gym. In fact, gym time is one of their favorite pastimes. When you find yourself dreading your workout, this means that you’ve lost your motivation.
You could try to power through it and force yourself, but this would be counterproductive. So, instead of pushing yourself out the door to do something you dread, try taking a few days off. With time, you’ll get your motivation back.
3. Your Muscles Are Cramping
Cramping is pretty normal, especially when you’re doing intense workouts. But if your muscles start cramping even when doing light exercises or randomly at night when you’re asleep, it means that you’re extremely fatigued and should probably take a few days off.
Do You Take Turkesterone on Rest Days: The Bottom Line
Taking rest days is a normal part of any exercise regimen, even when taking something as effective as a turkesterone supplement. Your body sustains a lot of damage during your workout routines. Giving it a chance to heal enables you to come back healthier, stronger, and more motivated.
While you’re at it, you should keep taking your turkesterone supplements during your rest days. Turkesterone’s ability to support your natural bodily functions can help you get the most out of your recovery period.