Believe it or not, but the headline for this post is actually what one of my clients asked me today.  It was quite entertaining, but before you assume I was being mean or I have no heart, let me explain.

You see, when I train my clients I let them know they’re going to get a rest after a certain exercise – which I think is pretty fair, don’t you?  But the problem arises when they don’t feel as if they had a “break”.

Hmm…I understand where their coming from but I feel there’s a lot of confusion with my definition of a break and theirs.

Here’s what I mean.

Client Definition:  To them and maybe this might apply to you as well, might think that by having a break you’re entitled to maybe having a seat, catching your breath, chit-chatting with fellow members and maybe…just maybe…grabbing a quick drink of water.

Marci’s Definition:  Well for my definition I would use a different word rather than “break”.  I like to call “breaks“, “active recovery” .  The difference between your break and my break is that you utilize your time to perform a low impact or passive exercise.

This can include things such as holding up a plank position, low impact jumping jacks, holding up push up position or a simple wall sit.  It doesn’t have to be something crazy, it just has to allow you to recover while gently working your muscles at the same time (is that an oxymoron?).

By incorporating active recovery in your workouts, you’ll benefit by increasing your muscular and cardiovascular endurance.  You’ll also be using your time more wisely and in return see more results without actually doing more workout sessions.

Here’s a quick equation to prove my point.

Let’s say you exercise for an hour, within that hour you take 8 breaks of a minute each.  Thats 8 minutes you could be doing some sort of light activity while still catching our breath.

Now if you switched your breaks into active recovery 3 times a week for those 8 minutes, you’ll earn yourself 24 extra minutes of exercise per week, which is 96 extra minutes a month, and 1152 extra minutes a year – Pretty sweet huh?

So the next time you feel like taking a “break” do a simple exercise to get the most out of your workout and soon enough when you exercise with your friends and they say “Hey let’s take a break!“, you can confidently say “pfft, I don’t need a break“.  Just take a couple seconds to help them pick their jaw of the floor.