This week was my rest week. Coming out of spring soccer and going into preseason for school, I needed to let my bruised and battered body rest and heal. Not an understatement. A whole week of no soccer, no lifting (and no school! Finally!). Normally, you would want to be doing light lifting (either reducing weight or reps), but due to the type of injuries I had - foot and knee - I couldn't without further aggravating them and potentially injuring myself worse.

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However, enough rambling. The mistake I made was not doing anything. I told myself this was a rest week, but then I used that as an excuse to not do much and lay around all day. I wasn't preparing myself to go back into lifting harder than ever and to go back into practices; I just sat around. This is most definitely NOT what I should've been doing. I should've been preparing to hit the road again (by doing hot-cold-hot soaks, stretching, and maybe doing simple body-weight exercises).

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So if you are hitting a plateau, you aren't progressing as fast as you would wish, or you just feel exhausted and sore: take a rest week. It will definitely help. But don't make the mistakes I did. Plan out what it will look like: it's not a lazy week, it's a week that lets you work harder in the future; get a lot of sleep; and kick any bad habits you might have fallen into, replacing them with good habits. You are reducing a high-value activity in your life, so make sure that you aren't replacing it with a low-value one, that would be counterproductive.

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Rest weeks are important, but don't go become lazy. Care for your body and it will care for you