Charities warn workout addicts to take rest days for their own health and safety

 

Mental health charities have warned workout addicts to start taking rest days to avoid becoming unwell or injured from over-exerting their bodies.

 

According to global data during the lockdowns, at least 52.2% of UK citizens completed home workouts on a daily basis with 31.7% of them not completing regular exercise prior to this. 

 

Although regular exercise has been proven to help both your physical and mental health, there are now concerns that people are becoming exercise addicts and pushing their bodies to the point of injury. 

 

Prior to the pandemic, around 10 million UK citizens had purchased gym memberships with many more

attending gyms on a pay as you go biases according to research by Statista. 

 

These figures have been predicted to have gone up since gyms have now been allowed to re-open due to the amount of interest people showed in workouts during the pandemic. 

 

Archie Thatcher, 20, a Bournemouth-based frequent gym-goer stated: “I had to stop going to the gym as much because I was putting too much pressure on my body by going every day.

 

“After sessions, my muscles would ache for ages as I wasn’t giving them enough time to heal in between workouts.”

 

It is common for muscles to feel sore after workouts and completing another workout while they are still aching is under normal circumstances fine and a cycle that a lot of regular gym goers tend to experience.

 

However, it has been advised that if the pain is extreme or agonising then you might have injured yourself and therefore should rest until the pain goes away.

 

National gym franchise Pure Gym, has also expressed their concerns on the matter in the past by advising gym-goers to take rest days regularly as well as explaining the importance of giving your muscles a break on their health and fitness blog.

What are the symptoms that you’re becoming an exercise addict?

 

For advice about working out safely and when to take a break please visit https://www.mind.org.uk/search-results?q=+exercise#stq=%20exercise&stp=1