Modern life often requires strenuous work, as a result of which, at some point, fatigue, both physical and emotional, accumulates. It is important to know how to rest properly so that the activity is productive and the mood is positive.
The need to restore the body
Good rest is a vital necessity for a person, without which the quality of work is sharply reduced. To determine the optimal mode of work and rest, you need to remember a few simple rules.
To work productively, you need to restore your strength. Rest is not an escape from work, but a way to recharge your energy supply. It does not mean lying at home for many hours in front of the TV. In order to wake up in the morning with a fresh head and positive thoughts, you need to arrange an active rest in the evening.
A walk, a cool shower and a clean bed will ensure a healthy sleep. Each person has an individual need for sleep, but 8 hours is considered ideal. During this time, the body manages to recover completely, physically and psychologically. If a situation has arisen when it is not possible to sleep at night, it is necessary to arrange a short daytime sleep, as people who usually engage in mental activity rest.
You need to start rest when fatigue has not yet appeared and there are forces left to organize physical activity. The optimal working week is 40 hours. Increasing this time will not increase work productivity, but will lead to overwork and depression, which may require long-term treatment.
Fractional rest is more rational. It is better to rest for 10 minutes during every hour. If fatigue accumulates, it will be much more difficult to cope with it. That is why standards for office workers have been developed. People whose activities are related to the computer are entitled to 15-minute breaks during every hour. This time should be spent on a short walk in the park or doing physical exercises. Such a short but active rest will greatly increase the productivity of further work.
Change of activity
Even in ancient Greece, changing the type of activity was considered an example of how to relax. And not in vain! Rest implies a change in the activity of various organs:
- alternating mental work with physical work is the best option for restoring strength;
- if work involves low physical activity, rest should be associated with movement - it can be swimming, running or just walking in the park.
A change of scenery
Changing the environment allows you to effectively recuperate:
- if the work is related to being indoors, rest should be spent in nature;
- if a person works in a team, then he will receive emotional relief by staying in solitude for a while, preferably in nature;
- for people working in the open air, going to the theater or museum will be a real pleasure;
- in office work, a visit to the gym, club or dance floor will allow you to relax well.
Changes in the emotional state are also important for the nervous system. If during the day there are many meetings with different people, nervous tension accumulates, then how to relax after work? Emotional fatigue can be relieved by a walk in the forest or along the river bank. With monotonous paper work, playing sports or, for example, a disco will be an excellent way to relax.
You need to be able to switch off from work after a hard day. Do not discuss at home the problems associated with the main activity, and unfinished business. It is also advisable to turn off the phone even during a short rest.
A healthy lifestyle contributes to effective recuperation. Alcoholic drinks can give the illusion of a temporary relaxation, but later there will be an even greater breakdown, and the next day your head will hurt.
Weekend in nature
It is worth considering a weekend getaway. It is impossible to sleep off for a week in two days. Lying aimlessly on the couch in front of the TV will also not relieve fatigue. It is better to go with family or friends to the countryside, to the forest or to the mountains, to the river. Such a rest will charge you with positive emotions for the whole week and will allow you to go to work on Monday in a good mood.
Here are some tips on how to unwind after work on the weekends:
- a person who works without rest wears out the body faster, it is important for him to realize the need to restore strength;
- reduce to a minimum the time spent at the computer or TV;
- do not start an alarm clock on the morning of the day off - you can oversleep a little;
- do not run to the kitchen to prepare breakfast - there is no rush;
- do not accumulate all the cases for the weekend and do not try to redo them;
- forget about household plans and arrange a walk in the park, a family dinner in a cozy cafe or do some kind of sport.
Vacation
Even for a person doing what they love, a vacation is necessary. It helps to restore vital energy, without which the body will constantly be in a state of fatigue. A regularly and properly resting person has better health, reliable immunity. It is better suited for intense mental activity.
In order for the vacation to bring the maximum effect, it is better to split it into several parts and rest every three to four months for one week. This is quite enough to fully restore their strength and not wean from work. A long rest is too relaxing, after it it is more difficult to return to the usual rhythm. Therefore, it is necessary to choose the best option. The best vacation spots are quiet, picturesque corners of nature. You can go to the sea or lake, to the mountains, to the river bank, away from the noisy city.
Leaving work, many dream of sleeping off and lying on the beach. However, it is also necessary to rest on vacation correctly. Hiking, sea air and water, fresh fruits and greens will contribute to cleansing and restoring the body.
It is necessary to draw up a holiday plan, which will include active activities - visits to historical and natural attractions, museums. It is especially interesting to observe the life of an unfamiliar city, to get acquainted with the local culture, to participate in national holidays. The richer the rest, the more vivid memories will remain. They will also be reminded by photos and videos that will evoke positive emotions.
Going on vacation, do not choose night flights. After them, a lot of time is spent on adaptation, sleep and recuperation, for a long time you feel not rested, but tired. In the early days, you should also not get involved in active activities until the body is rebuilt. It is better to relax a little, go swimming, hiking.
During the holidays, you do not need to call work, find out the news, it is better to read light literature. Shopping should not be postponed until the last day. At the end of the holiday, it is better to leave two days for a relaxing holiday. As a rule, many people get very tired from shopping.
How to relax after work? Using the above recommendations, you can effectively organize your schedule. This will allow you to always be cheerful, cheerful and healthy.
Someone will say that this is a simple matter: to rest is not to work. This is mistake. There are much more rules for quality rest than for productive work.
Rest is a must
We have such workaholics who work from morning to evening and constantly put off rest, trying first to finish super-important work - to fly to Mars, turn back the Ob and Lena, end the war, defeat famine in Africa ... And then, they say, for all the years at once you can go on vacation. It is forbidden! Fatigue and exhaustion are two different things. Fatigue, for example, is very beneficial for the body. It trains the body, tempers it, because after the rest, the cells restore their normal state, accumulate energy again and are ready to work again. The constant process of training "fatigue-recovery" increases the body's capabilities. Fatigue is another matter entirely. You can’t restore it with rest, because the depletion of cells sets in, you have to restore them with the help of drugs. Therefore, it is imperative to rest, not bringing the body to overwork.
Rest should be regular.
Worked for 11 months - drop everything and go on vacation. It has been absolutely reliably established that it is impossible to rest after the fact, as well as to rest in advance before laborious work. The nervous system will not allow. She is generally like that - she loves a clear rhythm very much. In everything. In the change of work and rest, too. Recovery occurs at three levels: daily short-term rest, weekly recuperation and annual "overhaul" of the body. All these types of recreation must be carried out regularly at the same time.
On vacation, you need to change activities
If you have been sitting at a computer for a year, forget about it on vacation. Mental work should be replaced with physical activity. And if someone has been digging a ditch all year, throw a shovel into the bushes. If the work is associated with noise (a jackhammer, for example), ensure silence for yourself on vacation. In general, you need to give rest to all the tired senses - and ears, and eyes, and nose.
Rest should be active
Spending the whole vacation on the couch is not a vacation, but a violation of the body and a complete disorder of health. This is also proven. Chase the ball with your friends, for example, go for a walk, swim, play beach volleyball or badminton, dance, finally. But just do not sleep for days.
Annual vacation should be spent away from home
By the way, many people do this now - they travel around the country and abroad. This is very correct. You can, of course, stay at home if your wallet or other circumstances do not allow you to leave. Just do not start, please, repair! Every day, leave the apartment, inventing a variety of activities for yourself: excursions, hiking and other entertainment.
Taking your spouse on vacation?
It is already clear that this is not so much a rule as a tricky question. Let's try to answer it. On the one hand, a vacation can revive a fading relationship, give it a new lease of life. On the other hand, on the contrary, to cause irritation due to a monthly stay in front of each other. By the way, after the Christmas holidays, the English courts are traditionally inundated with divorce cases. The British, it turns out, see their spouses so rarely during the year that they simply cannot stand the forced two-week stay together. There is also a third side to this medal… I am referring to the “Tula samovar”. In general, decide for yourself whether to relax with or without your halves.
Is it worth it to travel with kids?
So say child psychologists and pediatricians. Adult psychologists do not agree with them, they believe that parents should take a break from their children. This is just one of the incidents in the "single" rules of ideal psychohygienic rest. There are quite a few such inconsistencies. Therefore, you will have to decide for yourself - to relax with or without children.
Rest to improve your health
Holidays should be spent in accordance with all the rules of a healthy lifestyle. Try to give up bad habits. By changing the environment, some manage to stop drinking or smoking. And to reinforce this, try to make good habits. But everyone can come up with this to their liking.
On vacation, you need to make the most of natural factors - air, water, sun, forest
What to do with these factors, I believe, everyone knows. I can only emphasize that it is necessary for city dwellers to visit nature.
Relax with humor
Everyone knows that laughter prolongs life. But it also helps tired cells to recover. Therefore, collect the most humorous company on vacation. Yes, and do not frown. In general, only pleasant impressions should remain from the vacation. It is worth pampering yourself with new things. Ladies are encouraged to update their wardrobe. It would be nice to add sex to this directive. But it - high-quality and regular - should be throughout the year!
If you rely on all these rules, it is quite possible to draw up a vacation scenario, at least a little close to ideal.
The vital activity of an organism is determined by the exchange of substances between it and its environment, as well as between the organs and tissues of the organism itself. The more active the activity of the body, the more intense the metabolism. The harder the work, the greater the energy and nerve costs. After a fairly long mental or physical work, fatigue is felt and is natural human need for rest. Rest is necessary to restore expended energy and eliminate fatigue. The degree of recovery depends on the conditions in which the rest is spent. It is usually divided into:
- passive,
- active.
In sleep conditions, recovery proceeds more fully. The degree of recovery depends on the quality of sleep. Good dream characterized by rapid falling asleep and lack of dreams. By morning, the depth of sleep weakens. It becomes more superficial. After waking up, a person feels alert, rested, and working capacity is fully restored. Waking up, you should immediately get up, ventilate the room and do gymnastics. When determining the number of hours of sleep, age, features of the general condition of the body, the nervous system, as well as professional aspects are taken into account: - for an adult healthy person, the hygienic norm of sleep is 7–8 hours;
- with severe fatigue, it increases to 9-10 hours.
This gradually leads them to a state of overexcitation, followed by a phase of depression, the consequence of which is a decrease in performance. The largest Russian physiologist I. M. Sechenov The advantage of active rest over passive rest has been proven. For example, the working capacity of the right hand brought to complete fatigue was restored much faster if, after that, the load was given to the other - untired hand. The principle of organizing industrial gymnastics is based on the laws of active recreation. Active recreation with exercises and games that evenly load all muscles quickly eliminates fatigue and restores the balance of the central nervous system. When setting your mode, you need to plan passive and active rest just like work. If, by the nature of work, you have to be in a static position for a long time (standing, sitting), then a person’s need for rest occurs every 1.5–2 hours. At this time, you should switch for 3-5 minutes to dynamic work (walking, light exercises). After work walking in the air is a must. With intense mental work in the first half of the day, in the second it is necessary to provide for physical activity. If production work takes place in the second half of the day and physical exercises are transferred to the first, then the load should decrease somewhat, since pronounced fatigue from playing sports will adversely affect performance in the second half of the day. 
Without alternation and rest the body wears out much faster. Those who believe that the regime of everyday rest can be compensated for by a month's vacation are wrong. Only thoughtful daily, weekly rest, along with rest during the annual vacation, can help in the long run. maintain health and performance.
Sunday rest
Sunday rest must be planned in advance. Weekend tourism is the best form of outdoor activity. If part of the day is occupied with household chores, then the other must be spent outdoors, combined with feasible physical activity that gives pleasure. A day off must be built in such a way that after it there is a feeling of relaxation and deep physical and emotional satisfaction, so that it energizes for a whole week, it is a holiday. A gray and boring day off indoors does not stimulate the recovery of the energy expended during the week, and work during the following days will seem too tiring. Annual vacation
If normal rest is organized daily and weekly, then annual leave there is no such fatigue that forces you to see a doctor. During the annual vacation, everything should be subordinated to the task of recovery. If a person is practically healthy, he has wide opportunities for active recreation in rest houses and tourist camps. On vacation days, it is easiest to accustom yourself to daily physical exercises in the form of morning exercises, long walks, rowing, and so on.
It is generally accepted that only a vacation in the summer is good. Isn’t it possible to have a wonderful rest in winter, get stronger physically and harden! Skiing, skating, hiking in the winter in the frosty air have a life-giving effect on the body. A warm shower or wiping with a sponge dipped in warm water reinforces the positive effect on the nervous system. After that, there is a feeling of warmth, cheerfulness in the whole body. "Muscular joy" called I. P. Pavlov such a state. Knowledge of the physiological laws of work and the human need for rest should help everyone learn how to have a useful, interesting and beautiful rest. This will allow us to work more productively and maintain health for many years. A person's need for rest is caused by fatigue, or rather, it is a consequence of this fatigue. Recreation involves the fulfillment by a person of one of his fundamental needs for relaxation, relaxation, in switching efforts and attention from one subject to another.
Thus, the need for rest is primarily due to the biological nature of the human body, its physiology, as well as various kinds of psychological and social stress. A person's need for rest is inseparable from his opposite need - activity. In human activities, these needs are realized in the rhythmic alternation of activity-relaxation, wakefulness-sleep.)
As already mentioned, in the daily time budget of a person, there must be a period (most often night time) for physiological rest associated with complete relaxation. This is an indispensable condition for restoring strength, eliminating fatigue, preventing deep fatigue. Physiological rest becomes a means of reproducing the vital functions of a person, taking up non-working time. This type of recreation, like a number of other primary needs (for food, drink, hygiene procedures), creates conditions for the reproduction of human activity, so they are not associated with leisure. Another thing is that a tired person can spend part of his free time on passive rest (drowsiness, relaxation) during the day.
The concept of rest is much broader than its physiological basis associated with passive relaxation. Rest can be realized through akactive leisure forms, which is connected with the actualization of human social and cultural resources. For example, as an active form of recreation, the replacement of one dynamic activity with another is considered, as well as a change in the environment, a change of impressions, a distraction from everyday and monotonous worries, etc. Active recreation is extremely effective - physical exercises, as well as a favorite thing, especially if if it is saturated with creative elements! Such rest and recovery processes provide a person with the opportunity to choose various activities in their free time, including those that are of a pronounced sociocultural nature, for example, aimed at communicating with other people, their own spiritual development, unlocking creative possibilities, doing what they love (hobby) or exercise.
Of course, active rest takes other forms than rest in a state of sleep and idleness, it is accompanied by a quick and deep restoration of strength, its consequences are constructive and become more stable. For such rest, as a rule, non-working days of the week are used, as well as vacation time. During a period of short or long rest, when a person varies the choice of different activities in accordance with his preferences, his effective recovery takes place, his working capacity is restored. Thus, rest as a whole has a complex structure, influencing various - biophysiological, psychological, sociocultural - aspects of the personality structure. Rest only partially intersects with free time or leisure of a person, going generally beyond their scope.
In a broad sense, the phenomenon of relaxation is close to the phenomenon recreationtions(from lat. recreation - return to health, recovery). Until recently, the concept of recreation remained uncommon, used only in narrow circles of specialists in the medical rehabilitation of a person. This concept was associated mainly with relaxation and regeneration of the vital-physiological forces of a person.
Now recreation is understood as a biological activity of a person, which is aimed at restoring the physiological, physical potential, at improving the mental and spiritual forces that are weakened in the process of work, monotonous activities or illness. Therefore, now recreation is interpreted as a holistic physical and socio-cultural recovery.
recreational activity of a person corresponds, firstly, to his needs and interests, secondly, to the traditions of his native culture, and thirdly, to the behavioral and evaluative standards of the immediate social environment. Recreational activity of an individual consists of daily, weekly, annual and life cycles. At each stage of a person's life, they form a complex network of diverse prerequisites and motivations that determine the nature, direction and effectiveness of recreational activity. This activity is considered effective if, as a result, restorative (recreational) effects occur.
recreational effect manifests itself in the fact that a person experiences a feeling of cheerfulness and satisfaction from the rest, since his body has reached the required level of energy exchange with the environment as a result of physiological and psychological recovery, achieving peace of mind. A person experiencing a recreational effect is in a state of psycho-physiological comfort, he has a feeling of balance in emotional and socio-cultural self-assessments, he is ready for new loads. Favorable emotions and high self-esteem are based not only on inner feelings, but also on a person's understanding of the importance of social standards of work and rest.
Steps taken, total activity time, calories burned – keeping track of all these important data helps us live healthier, more fulfilling lives and be more active. But often we forget about the important role of proper rest and do not realize why our body needs rest and recovery.
Together with you, you can track your sleep and improve its quality. But this is only part of the formula for a good rest. Your tracker can also be extremely useful for self-monitoring and limiting activity on rest days so that your body can fully recover.
To fully understand how important rest and recovery is for active people, here are six simple reasons for the need for proper rest.
one . Rest prevents injury
Everyone knows that rest reduces injuries, but how does this happen? On weekends, you take a break after your daily stress. This applies to both work and active training - running, push-ups and even walking. If you regularly run and do fitness training, then you need to take a break and take a day off. If you use your muscles and joints too intensively, non-stop, they will suffer from excessive stress - and this is why injuries can happen.
2. Your muscles need rest
This is probably the first thing you should know when starting strength training. When you lift weights, you are essentially stretching the muscle fibers. Without proper rest and a period of rest, your muscles will not be able to recover and your workouts will harm you instead of benefiting you. That's why you should alternate exercises for different muscle groups, distributing them on different days of the week.
3 . Your performance will not suffer
It should take about two weeks of total inactivity before your body loses any of the skills it has learned from training and before your performance level drops. So a break in training of 1-2 days will not affect your performance and fitness.
4 . Excessive exercise harms your sleep
Exercising too intensely can leave your body in a state of constant restlessness, hyperactivity, and increased excitability. A characteristic sign of this condition is heart palpitations and insomnia. A few days will help you reduce excitability and heart rate, regulate sleep and restore strength.
five . Your immune system may fail
During intense training, your immune system is constantly working to repair your muscles and joints. Without proper rest, the immune system may not withstand such a load and the body's systems will not recover in time. What will happen next? You guessed it, injuries.
6. Psychological recovery
From a psychological point of view, a period of rest can rekindle your desire for exercise and prevent the development of depression. Mental fatigue can be just as harmful as physical fatigue. Therefore, rest is also necessary in order to recharge the psyche.
Just as you set daily goals and objectives, you should also determine your rest days. One or two days a week you need to take a complete rest from training so that your muscles can recover. Use a Fitbit tracker to limit activity on rest days. Don't forget that active recovery is also extremely beneficial - standard stretching and light yoga to keep your body flexible and support circulation will help you a lot.
And, of course, sleep is also very important for proper rest, recovery and well-being. Use your tracker to improve the quality and quantity of your sleep. Good sleep will help you be in the best shape on your most active days!
