Active Recovery or Rest — What’s the Difference?
Rest and recovery days each play a unique and essential role in your training plan, helping you stay strong, build fitness and prevent injuries. Though often used interchangeably, they’re not the same thing! Here’s what they mean in practical terms and how to use them effectively in your training.
Rest Days: Complete Relaxation
On a true rest day, you’re focusing on not pushing your body in any way. Instead, you’re giving it time to fully repair and rebuild. Rest days are where much of the magic happens in terms of muscle recovery, tissue repair, and even mental reset.
What a rest day should look like
On a rest day, you’ll want to prioritize activities that promote relaxation and recovery. This might look like:
- Quality sleep: Aim to get 7-9 hours of uninterrupted sleep, as sleep is the time when the body does the most physical and mental repair.
- Good nutrition: Balanced, nutrient-rich meals support muscle recovery and immune health.
- Hydration: Staying hydrated is key for overall cellular repair and function.
- Gentle movement: If you feel like moving, keep it very light. A relaxed walk, stretching or restorative yoga can be great ways to keep the blood flowing without adding stress.
Avoid any activity that requires a significant physical effort or stresses the muscles you’re training. Skip the hike or casual game of tennis or soccer, even if it’s “just for fun” and consider that even house or yard work might get in the way of recovery if you’re working hard enough to break a sweat.
Why rest days are important
Skipping rest means your body misses out on the chance to repair small muscle tears caused by hard training and to replenish energy stores, which actually makes you more prone to injury and overuse issues. Rest days support immune health and balance the strain of hard workouts, and they help you feel ready for your next run.
Ideally, every training plan has at least one dedicated rest day per week. Your needs for rest vary depending on your running experience, training level and injury history. Injury-prone or beginner runners may rest 2-3 days a week, while an advanced marathoner might only rest every 10 days.
Recovery Days: Active Restoration
Recovery days involve movement, but the goal is to go easy enough that your body is still able to recover. On a recovery day, you’re looking to gently circulate blood through the muscles to remove waste products, deliver nutrients, and reduce stiffness from harder workouts.
A recovery day can be active but light, with activities that include:
- Recovery run: A light, easy-paced run or jog (there is no such thing as too slow for these!) to loosen up the muscles.
- Low-impact cross-training: Options like a low-intensity bike ride, swimming, or an elliptical session.
- Yoga: Focuses on flexibility and fluid movement, helping release tension without placing new demands on your muscles.
- Bodyweight strength or prehab: If you choose to do strength work, keep it very light on the legs with exercises targeting your core, mobility and balance, or any physical therapy you might be doing. Leave the heavy weights for your strength training day.
Using recovery runs in training
Recovery runs are often scheduled after a harder workout day or long run. They allow your legs to shake out the residual fatigue without adding a significant training load. The key to a true recovery run is pacing — it may be tempting to speed up as the fatigue wears off, but slow is better for these runs. Even though the load is very light, well-planned recovery runs sneakily add to your endurance without an added injury risk.
Recovery Weeks and Supercompensation
It’s typical to see a lighter recovery week in your training plan every 3-4 weeks, though training schedules can be structured in many ways. During these easier weeks, you’re still running on your usual days, but at a lower volume and intensity. You'll see:
- Mileage reduction: Fewer miles overall (anywhere in the range of 10-25% less), including a shorter long run. Depending on your training goals and experience (e.g. for a first-time marathoner), the long run might be a lot shorter.
- Speedwork adjustments: If your plan includes speed sessions, these are shorter and less intense. Light fartlek sessions are common in recovery weeks, to prioritize leg speed and a sense of fun over hard efforts.
Recovery weeks are especially valuable if you’re coming back from an injury, adjusting to a new training load or have been training hard. The lowered mileage and intensity give your body a chance to fully absorb the training without losing fitness, so you’re ready to build again the following week.
Why do we need recovery?
A theory that explains the performance benefits of recovery is called “supercompensation”. It describes the process of reaping the benefits of training during periods of rest and recovery. When you train hard, your body fatigues and your muscles experience microscopic damage. But you rest before this turns into injury, and during that rest or recovery period your body repairs itself to be even stronger. When you return to running (or full training), you’ll be fitter than you were before. It’s why we taper before longer races too: to benefit from the supercompensation effect just in time for race day.
In short:
Both rest and recovery days are essential tools in any balanced training plan. They allow you to train at higher intensities and improve your running over the long term, all while staying healthy and injury-free. Incorporating both types of days can help you train smarter, so all your training days — easy, intense, or somewhere in between — have a purpose that fits into the bigger picture of your goals.
About the author:
Heini Tallent is an RRCA Level 2 certified distance running coach and licensed massage therapist with a holistic, client-centered approach to coaching. She helps recreational runners aged 40ish and up train with more confidence, feel more motivated, and discover sustainable ways of making running a healthy and enjoyable lifelong habit. She is currently training for her first Boston Marathon and studying to become a functional medicine certified health coach in 2025.
