taking a week off | Cardio 101 | Forum

Darrin, I suppose you have to look at the individuals lifestyle pattern etc before you can make the decision on this.

I'll give examples:

Person has a manual job & trains 4 times per week.

Person has a sedinatry job & trains 4 times per week.

The person who has a manual job and is getting physical through work tasks would benefit from planned breaks from resistance training, but blood flow is necessary in oxygen/nutrient supply, so why would we break from 'cardio'?

The person who has a sedinatry job and gets no exercise as such. Do we plan a break?

Just looking at you point from a different angle m8,

Byron

When I ran my last race, I turned on my running to strict 3-4x a week with higher intensity levels, while continuing my strength training.  I tracked speed, time splits, heart rate.  Then the week of the my race (it was a 5K, nothing crazy), I ran easy (0% incline indoor or lower heartrate when outdoors) and skipped all my leg workouts.  If I do a longer race, I'd run shorter distances the week of the race.

As for weight training, I do believe in taking a week off once in a while.  Back then, I'd just not lift and continue my cardio.  My last "week off" coincided with a twisted wrist and a sprained ankle.  That was a very tough week for me as I couldn't really do anything besides pushups on fists and very careful neutral grip pullups.

Currently, I'm pretty lax about cardio, so my future cardio weeks off will probably be scheduled around races I plan to run.  Weight training weeks off would probably be every few months or so while cardio stays on (maybe when I go vacationing, which usually includes eating!)