Hibernation Mode: The Importance of Rest in Your Training Routine
- Dec 10, 2025
- 4 min read
If you’re someone who loves to move, train, lift, stretch, or sweat (hello, San Francisco athletes!), rest days can feel… tricky. Maybe even guilt-inducing. But here’s the truth: rest isn’t a step back, it’s natural, necessary, and it’s part of the training process itself.
Just like how bears settle into hibernation to conserve energy and rebuild, your body has its own version of hibernation mode. And when you learn to work with it instead of against it, everything improves — strength, mobility, mood, and even your long-term performance. And, if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, while the days are shorter and colder, it is the right time to focus on restoration.
Let’s talk about the importance of rest and why it deserves a real seat at the table in your routine.
Why Rest Is a Training Tool, Not a Break From Training
Intense training triggers the sympathetic nervous system (commonly called “fight or flight”). This increases your heart rate, and directs blood away from your digestive processes to your muscle tissue so you’re ready to move. The training itself creates tiny microtears in your muscle fibers and fascia, the connective tissue surrounding your muscles. Those are all normal, even healthy and expected responses to training.But the gains in strength you’re training for don’t happen during the workout. Your body has to go into “rest and digest” mode, or activate the parasympathetic nervous system, to get those repairs done. If you keep your activity levels up, your body never gets the chance to go into recovery mode.
Rest supports:
Muscle repair and growth
Digestive and metabolic processes
Joint and spinal recovery
Nervous system regulation
Better mobility and reduced stiffness
More stable energy levels
Improved form, strength, and skill development
If you’ve been pushing through your fatigue or feeling a little frayed around the edges, your body might be whispering — or shouting — that it needs its hibernation moment.
Signs You Might Need More Rest Than You Think:
Your normal workouts feel harder than usual
You’re waking up stiff or achy more often
Your sleep feels “light” or not as restorative
You’re irritable or having trouble focusing
Your mobility suddenly feels limited
Small tweaks or nagging aches keep returning
These are your body’s early-warning lights. Honoring them prevents bigger setbacks later.
Active Rest vs. Passive Rest: Both Matter
It can be difficult for an active person to come to a full stop for rest. Think about those days you went to the gym later than usual, only to be too amped up to fall asleep later that night. Using Active Rest techniques like gentle movements to promote circulation, breathing exercises, even a slow paced walk can help you get more from your Passive Rest. Things like powering down to sleep, getting bodywork, sitting for meditation, or getting in the Infrared Therapy Sauna.
Here are some of our favorite Active Rest Quick Tips from our YouTube Channel archives:
Gentle movements like these help nourish tissue and calm the nervous system without adding load.
Once you’ve gotten your nervous system down-regulated, then you’re ready for these Passive Rest Quick Tips:
Where Bodywork Fits In - Bodywork amplifies your rest days by calming your fight-or-flight response, increasing circulation for faster recovery, and helping your body integrate the gains in strength your training creates. Consider scheduling a session during your next rest week.
Infrared Therapy - The three types of Infrared wavelengths carry different benefits, but they all help you rest and relax. The Near infrared promotes skin renewal and cell health. The Mid infrared penetrates deeper where inflammation occurs encouraging the healing process. And Far infrared reaches the furthest into the body stimulating sweat glands for a detoxifying sweat.
Infrared Therapy at Psoas Massage + Bodywork Sleeping - Deep sleep is the creme de la creme of restoration for the body. Deep sleep is when your body repairs muscle and bone, strengthens your immune system, and balances your hormones. If you’re only getting “light” sleep, try adjusting your sleeping posture with these videos:
Letting your body fully “power down” is where deeper restoration happens — hormones rebalance, tissues recover, and your whole system resets. Both Active and Passive Rest support your long-term performance. Think yin and yang for your training routine.
How to Build Your Own “Hibernation Week”
Every few weeks — especially after a training ramp-up — your body benefits from a mini reset.
Try including:
2–4 easy days with just walking or mobility
1 full rest day (zero training)
Gentle spinal mobility or decompression work
Earlier bedtimes
Hydration + protein focus
Skipping the PR attempts
This isn’t you “losing progress.” This is you making room for your next level.
Try This: A 5-Minute Hibernation Reset
A short sequence you can do anytime fatigue creeps in:
Deep belly breathing (1 minute)
Cat-cow spinal waves (1 minute)
Child’s pose with long exhales (1 minute)
Supine twist on each side (1 minute total)
Gentle Spine Twist for QL Stillness — lying flat with eyes closed (1 minute)
Final Thoughts Before Bed
Sometimes the missing piece isn’t more effort — it’s more restoration. Rest isn’t optional, and it’s not laziness, or a sign of weakness. Rest is strategy to build strength. Rest is where your body becomes the version of you you’re working so hard for in the gym. When you give yourself permission to hibernate, even just a little, you'll see the rewards when you get back in action.
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