Episode 59: Tips for Getting Better Rest to Maximize Your Gains
If you’re serious about building muscle, losing fat, or leveling up your performance, here’s a truth you need to hear: rest is not a luxury—it’s a necessity.
In this episode of the Coaching Corner Podcast, I break down why rest and recovery are just as important as your workouts. In fact, without proper rest, you’re not just stalling progress—you could be actively sabotaging your gains.
The Problem With "No Days Off" Culture
We live in a world that praises the "rise and grind" mindset. Hustle harder. Sleep when you're dead. But when it comes to your health and fitness, that mentality can be more harmful than helpful.
Chronic stress, poor sleep, and overtraining can lead to:
Plateaus in strength and fat loss
Hormonal imbalances
Increased risk of injury
Mental burnout and low motivation
Your body needs downtime to recover, rebuild, and adapt.
The Role of Your Nervous System in Recovery
In the episode, I explain the key roles of the sympathetic nervous system (your “go” mode) and the parasympathetic nervous system (your “rest and repair” mode). To make real progress in the gym—or in any physical pursuit—you need to allow your body to shift out of high-alert and into deep recovery.
Training breaks your body down. Rest is where the magic of growth actually happens.
How to Optimize Your Recovery
Here are a few of the recovery tips I discuss in the episode that you can start using today:
1. Take Regular Rest Days
At least 1–2 rest days per week should be part of your training plan. Think of them as active recovery days, not lazy days. Go for a walk, do some mobility work, or just let your body chill.
2. Prioritize Sleep
Sleep is where most of your recovery happens—both physically and mentally. Aim for 7–9 hours a night, and try to:
Stick to a consistent sleep schedule
Limit screen time 1 hour before bed
Keep your bedroom cool, dark, and quiet
3. Manage Your Stress
Chronic stress keeps your body in "go mode." Use tools like breathwork, journaling, meditation, or even short walks to regulate your nervous system and shift into recovery mode.
4. Listen to Your Body
Fatigue, irritability, poor performance, and restless sleep are signs you may be under-recovered. Don’t ignore them. Adjust your training volume or intensity when needed.
Final Thoughts: Rest Is a Tool, Not a Weakness
If you’ve been pushing hard and not seeing results, it might be time to zoom out and rethink your approach. Rest isn’t the opposite of work—it’s what makes your work effective.
Want to dive deeper? Listen to the full episode here and subscribe to the Coaching Corner Podcast for more evidence-based fitness strategies.
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Jayd (00:00):
Balance out as much as you are active in your training, as much as your sympathetic nervous system is activated, you have to balance that out with effective rest. So you need to think about rest as it's like yin and yang, right? You can't have one without the other. You can't have gains without rest. You work hard in the gym, but you have to balance it out with effective rest. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer for about 10 years, and I've created this podcast to share with you some of the tips and tricks that I share with my personal training clients to help them to build muscle, burn fat and get strong. In today's episode, I'm going to share with you a conversation that I had with my Twitch channel where we were talking about the importance of rest.
(00:54)
Now, when a lot of us think about fitness, we often think about the workouts and the energy expenditure as well as eating healthy. But another really important factor of the total equation of your health is getting proper rest. Now that includes time resting from exercise or time resting from stressing your body as well as the rest that you get while you're sleeping every night. In this episode, I'll show you why it's so important for you to get good rest, and it'll also give some tips to help you get good rest and a good night's sleep that you can maximize your gains. Before we get into the episode, make sure to like this video if you're watching on YouTube and subscribe to the channel, and if you are listening to this episode, make sure that you follow the show so that you always get the latest episodes delivered right to your device. If you are interested in the services and products that I offer, head to my website, Jaydigains.com. That's J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-I-N s.com. I am taking on personal training clients at the moment, so check out the coaching program options on my website and without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(02:05)
This topic that we're going to talk about, I call rest, is gains. I think it's a very particular thing to American culture, but I'm sure it's in other places too, but Americans in particular do not like to rest. We have this hustle culture and it's pretty toxic to be honest. It can be good and motivating you to push forward, but we're not machines. We're living creatures, and part of being a living creature is that we do need rest. I think we need to reframe how we think about rest. A lot of times people think of rest as being lazy or a cop out. I should be productive, I should be doing something right now. But rest itself is a system of your body and it is productive and that's why I like to say rest is gains. You have two different operating systems of your nervous system.
(03:10)
One is the sympathetic nervous system, one is the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is your action system. And when your sympathetic nervous system is activated, that's when your body releases go hormones like adrenaline and cortisol and hormones that get you motivated to do things, do, do, do, do, right? So when you are working out, that's sympathetic nervous system. If you get stressed, if you're stressed by work or you're anxious and you're trying to get something done, that is sympathetic nervous system activation. Your parasympathetic nervous system is what we call your rest and digest system. The parasympathetic nervous system is activated when you're at rest, when you're sleeping, and that system is what turns on to turn the food that you eat into muscle and to repair damaged tissue. So when you're sick, one of the reasons why we want you to rest right when you're sick is that allows the parasympathetic nervous system to take over and activate all of the healing and the repairs, and it helps with your immune system, right?
(04:26)
Because when we're working out in the gym, we're not actually building muscle, we're breaking muscle down. That's what effective training does. It actually causes damage, controlled damage to the muscles, so you're not building anything when you're working out. It's triggering the systems that when you go to sleep, then you actually build the muscle. Your body turns all that protein that you've eaten into muscle protein. So it's important to prioritize rest and balance out as much as you are active in your training, as much as your sympathetic nervous system is activated, you have to balance that out with effective rest. So you need to think about rest as it's like yin and yang. You can't have one without the other. You can't have gains without rest. You work hard in the gym, but you have to balance it out. With effective rest. You'll probably see people who really rise and grind and it's toxic.
(05:24)
And you see this in the fitness world with people who say things like no days off and they do every workout that they do, four or 5, 6, 7 days a week is really, really hard and it's really high intensity. There's no recovery. They're not focused on doing mobility work. They're not focused on doing rehabbing or pre rehabbing exercises. They skip their warmups, they skip their cool downs. Those are people who've internalized this rise and grind mentality, and those are the same people who often end up getting injury after injury after injury or burning out, falling off the wagon and stopping, working out completely and gaining a bunch of weight. That rise and grind mentality is a threat to your gains, but also your overall wellbeing. So remember Ed, you got to balance the two as hard as you train in the gym, you also make sure that you're getting effective rest.
(06:23)
So it's important that you prioritize resting in a couple of different ways. One, take your rest days. You do not need to be working out every single day of the week, okay? No days off is toxic. You can get up and move around and you can get some activity in every day, that's fine, but you shouldn't be stressing your body every single day because your body needs time to recover and make repairs. So at least at the very least, take a rest day once a week, seven days, but that's really cutting it close. You really should be taking a rest day after every two to three workout days. If you want to avoid burning out or getting injured, you can just lay around and be lazy if you want, if that's what your body needs, listen to your body. But if you want to get up and moving, you want to actually be active, then go for a light walk, right?
(07:16)
Don't do anything too stressful, but you can still get up and move around. Clean your house. Light intensity activities like that that aren't going to stress the body, but get the blood flowing can be good for your recovery too. Doing some yoga is also good, some stretching, maybe some foam rolling. Go for a walk with a friend or with your dog. Just avoid something that's going to be too high intensity on your body. On the other hand, in addition to taking rest days and giving your body the time to recuperate and recover every couple of days after you've worked out, it's also super important that you're prioritizing getting a good night's sleep as often as you can because sleep is when that rest and digest parasympathetic nervous system is activated. If you are not sleeping well, then your body's not running that system as efficiently as it could, which means you were going to miss out on gains because your body is not actually doing the rebuilding, the breaking down of your nutrition and turning it into muscle.
(08:18)
That's not happening as much because you're not sleeping and it's when you're sleeping that that system runs. So everybody needs to focus on and prioritize getting a good night's sleep on most nights and how much sleep you need really varies from person to person, but it's usually somewhere between eight and 10 hours of good quality sleep per night and that you might need more. Women in general tend to need to sleep more. And then depending on where you are in your cycle, you might need to sleep more too. If you are in your luteal phase or on your period, you may need to sleep more. If you're in a high intensity block of your training, you likely will need to sleep more too. So how much activity you get, how much exercise you get and how intense your workouts are will also require more sleep.
(09:06)
So a lot of times people say that they need to sleep more when they're on a cut, when you're in a calorie deficit, which makes sense, right? Because your body is slower at making repairs, it's not going to be as efficient at making repairs. So you'll likely need to sleep more in order for your body to actually keep up with the recovery that it needs from your workouts when you're not eating as many calories as your body needs. So it's definitely worthwhile prioritizing, getting good sleep. But this is the one thing that I think most of my friends struggle with the most for a number of reasons. There's a lot of reasons why people don't sleep enough. One is that a lot of us tend to not go to bed when we need to, which is definitely the case for me, especially if I've had a really shitty day.
(09:58)
If I've been really busy all day and I've had meeting after meeting task after task and I haven't really had any time to unwind, I'm more likely to engage in what some people call revenge bedtime. Revenge bedtime is a silly little term. I don't know where it came around, but I heard about it on TikTok. But revenge bedtime is when you feel like the day was not yours, and so you're taking time to yourself as revenge for the day, not feeling like it belonged to you, and you end up pushing past your bedtime to give yourself more time to yourself and then you end up going to bed like an hour, two hours, three hours or more past when you actually need to. So I'm more likely to do that when I'm really overly busy, if I'm overly worked and really stressed. So not going to bed when you need to get enough rest.
(10:49)
That's one thing that's pretty easy to actually change though. You just kind of have to get more organized and disciplined around it. I set a bedtime reminder on my phone so my phone will tell me, Hey, it's time to wind down. Now, ideally for myself, and this is what I found over the last couple of years, ideally for me, I want to be in bed at 9 30, 9 30 pm That gives me plenty of time to read a little bit to wind down and go to sleep. So I have my phone remind me at like eight 15 way ahead of time, like, Hey, your bedtime's coming up soon. And then it actually goes ahead and it goes into sleep mode on my phone. So I'm not getting new alerts that are triggering because new alerts is one thing that can get my sympathetic nervous system fired up, get me into problem solving mode, and you know what I mean?
(11:39)
So my phone doesn't, my phone, my computer, they don't send me alerts after 8:15 PM because that is my winding down before bedtime. So as long as I actually stick to that and I'm disciplined about going to bed in time, then that gives me plenty of time to sort of wind down before I actually have to go to sleep. For me, I'm not the kind of person that can just lay down and go right to sleep. I need to be in bed reading a book and giving myself a good stretch of 20 minutes to be ready to sleep. And if I wait too long, then I'll get a second wind, which is the worst dude. It's the worst when you get the second wind and you're like, now I'm like two or three hours late of my bedtime, and I'm like, my brain is re-fired up.
(12:27)
So setting a bedtime for yourself and sticking to it is an easy fix, easy way for you to get more effective rest. And that goes to say it's also important, getting into a consistent sleep schedule is a part of that. Your body doesn't really understand the difference between weekends and weekdays. Your circadian rhythm runs on a 24 hour cycle. So it is helpful if you can keep your bedtime and your waking time consistent on most days. So where you're going to sleep at about the same time and you're waking up at about the same time, it'll be so much easier for you to get effective rest if you keep your sleep schedule consistent, right? Going to bed at about the same time and trying to wake up at the same time, even on the weekends and on the weekdays. I mean, initially it's hard to get your body into that routine, but the more that you try to stick to that, the more your body will actually automatically start winding down, leading up to your planned bedtime.
(13:29)
So stick to a consistent routine and try to wake up at the same time and go to sleep at the same time, even on the weekends, if you have trouble getting to sleep, make sure that you're creating a sleep friendly environment for yourself. If your bedroom is hot and there's lots of lights, our bodies are queued to get sleepy when we are in a cool dark environment. So I don't run the air conditioning very much in my house during the day. I am okay with being warmer, but at night, that's when I turn the air conditioning on and I bump it down a little bit to make sure that it's cool enough. I know I'm going to wake up and I'm going to be dehydrated because I'll sweat if it's warm. So bumping down the air conditioning, turning on a fan, making sure that there's some air flow, and then making sure that the light in my room is dim, leading up to bedtime.
(14:22)
I have a little salt lamp that I can dim, I can turn down and turn up. So it makes this nice warm soft light. That's what I have on 20 to 60 minutes before I plan to go to sleep, and I don't have any of the big lights on after eight 15. I also have like noise canceling, or not noise canceling, but blackout curtains. I have blackout curtains in my bedroom to keep the streetlight from waking me up. And I also have an air purifier that I run to give me some white noise because I need white noise, otherwise every little sound will wake me up. Figure out the conditions that you sleep best in and try to make sure that your sleep environment, sleep friendly environment has those things consistently figure out. If you prefer to sleep warm, then make sure that your environment is warmer.
(15:12)
If you prefer to sleep cooler, make sure that you're cool enough and make sure that your sleep environment is consistently setting you up for being able to fall asleep when you go there. Also, limit your exposure to electronic devices experts, say within an hour or two hours before you plan on going to sleep. The reason is because electronic devices is a lot of light shining right into your eyes and light cues our body circadian rhythms. So naturally as it starts to get dark, your body naturally starts to get sleepy, but that doesn't happen as much if you're on electronic devices and screens that are shining light into your eyes that can kind of interfere with that process. So wearing blue light blocker glasses can help, but still you don't really want to be looking at any bright screens or have any bright lights on within an hour or two before you plan on going to bed.
(16:09)
And also, it's like I said with the notifications too, that can be triggering, right? If you see a notification, you check your email, that can activate your sympathetic nervous system and get your adrenaline pumping or get you stressed, which will make it hard for you to fall asleep. So that's another reason to avoid the electronic devices. And also, if you have a hard time sleeping and you drink coffee or caffeinated beverages, or if you vape, if you smoke, if you use nicotine, if you use zens, avoid using those things or drinking those things before bedtime. At least four to six hours is ideal because stimulants will activate your sympathetic nervous system, which will make it harder for you to fall asleep or get effective sleep. So be careful about drinking coffee too close to bed or drinking sodas that have caffeine in them or vaping or using zens or whatever your stimulant of choice is.
(17:10)
Be mindful also of hidden sources of caffeine, like chocolate, especially if you eat dark chocolate or if you have hot chocolate that has a little bit of caffeine in it. Green tea and just like black tea as well, have caffeine in it. And some medications also have caffeine in them, so just be mindful of stimulants. Some medications are stimulants, like if you have a DHD, you don't want to take your A DHD medicine right before bed because it's stimulant. Let's see what else? You want to also manage your stress. I think that stress is probably the number one thing that keeps people from being able to sleep effectively because they don't have good habits of self-regulation. A lot of us weren't taught how to regulate our nervous systems as kids, right? Our parents didn't know how to regulate themselves, so they didn't teach us how to regulate ourselves.
(18:03)
And if that's the case, you might find yourself regulating your nervous system with unhealthy coping mechanisms like drinking or smoking or eating lots of sugar or comfort foods and other unhealthy stress coping mechanisms that people pick up. So learning how to regulate your nervous system is a great way to manage your stress. Like we were talking about before in the previous episode, there's a lot of different strategies that you can use to regulate your nervous system from mindfulness to breathing exercises, to somatic exercises like tapping, talking to a therapist, journaling. All of these are really great ways to regulate your nervous system. If you don't have good, healthy coping mechanisms or ways to regulate your nervous system, that likely is going to affect your sleep and then also watch your nutrition, right? I am definitely not the kind of person that can fall asleep when I have an empty stomach.
(19:04)
If I haven't eaten within one or two hours before bed, I will have a really hard time sleeping and I'll probably wake up in the middle of the night. So that's something I know about my body and I need to make sure that I have something in my belly before I go to bed. But you also want to avoid eating things before bed that are going to keep you up, things that are going to cause gastric distress or upset your stomach. You want to avoid really heavy meals, caffeine, of course, like we already talked about, and alcohol too. Even though alcohol is a depressant and it slows your system down, it doesn't actually help you to get good rest. It actually keeps you from getting good rest. So having alcohol before bed, you may think that you're unwinding and you're relaxing, but you're not going to get good sleep with alcohol in your system.
(19:55)
So instead, you want to eat when it gets closer to bedtime, you want to eat lighter meals, and you also want to incorporate sleep promoting foods. Some foods will make you feel sleepier. Things like high protein, high protein, but lean protein, things like Turkey, dairy products, nuts, seeds. You can even do bananas. Stuff that's also going to keep you full for a longer period of time that has a moderate amount of fiber so that you're not going to wake up hungry. So these are all little tips that you can use to get better sleep, get better rest to improve your gains, right? Because it's just like we said before, it's like yin and yang. As hard as you work out in your workouts, as much as you stress your body, you have to balance that out with effective rest. And if you struggle with effective rest, you can use any of these little strategies that we talked about to deal with that.
(20:55)
Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. I hope that you found this discussion helpful, and I'm curious to know what strategies you use to make sure that you are getting good, effective rest to maximize your gains. Leave those in the comments of this video if you're watching on YouTube. And don't forget that you can join me when I'm live on my Twitch channel by following me on Twitch. Just go to twitch.tv/Jaydigains and give me a follow to get notified whenever I go live. I usually go live on Tuesdays and Fridays in the fitness and health category to do my workout, answer fitness questions, and record a few episodes of the podcast. I'd love to see you there, and don't forget that you can find out more about me and the products and services that I offer by going to my website, Jaydigains.com. I'll see you in the next episode. In the meantime, make sure that you are eating your veggies, eating plenty of proteins, staying hydrated, and taking good care of yourself. I'll see you soon.
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