But is there actually an articulated science doctrine on resting athletes? Without turning to a learned treatise, here are a few articles that sum up the theories:
-In 2013, Laura Hambelton of the Washington Post wrote an article detailing professional sports team trainers and their goals and concerns. Proper rest was a huge part of their concern. Washington Capitals trainer
Greg Smith explained that: “You can’t make [athletes] tired. They have to have proper rest. They sleep eight to 10 hours a day. The better rest [a pro athlete gets], the better they recover.”
-In 2014,
Cork Gaines of Business Insider wrote an article detailing how Poppovich started to rest his players more over the years. Gaines wrote that in 2010-11, Pop would rest one of his stars every now and then late in the year. By 2012-13, however, Pop would started resting even early in the season and sitting the stars in groups. The pattern also showed that: “The move always happens on the road against a good team and on days when the Spurs had a game the night before.”
-In a
2016 article for the Huffington Post, Daniel Duane found that resting was a vital component of the training process in the context of marathon trainers. Duane wrote that working out must be balanced with time off: “exercise physiologists have identified potential markers of the ulative fatigue caused by long-term training -– es in enzymes, for example, associated with inflammation and muscle damage. Jump back into working out too soon, before you shed all that built-up fatigue, and you virtually guarantee substandard performance later.”