They say you are what you eat, which is partially true, in that what you eat influences directly how your body performs. To say it differently, you get out what you put in. If you only feed your body lousy food, you are guaranteed not to perform as well as you would like.

Many runners know what it is like to run through pain. You wake up in the morning with a sore knee, but you go out and run anyway because usually, your pain goes away after a minute. But what if it doesn’t go away? What if you seriously injure yourself because you do not know when to stop?

Picture this: it’s a beautiful day outside, and you decide to replace your daily gym routine with a nice run. After your warm-up, you pick up a good pace, feeling your heart pounding in your chest and the sun on your face. Suddenly, you feel a searing pain in the front of your shin that causes you to come to a full stop. You wonder, what in the world was that? Then, you worry that you may be suffering from a very common stress response for any runner: shin splints.

Rest is essential to any athlete’s routine, especially runners. If runners neglect to rest, they increase their injury risk and decrease their muscles’ ability to recover. Some runners may not rest as much as they need to, thinking that if they rest, they will slow their progress. On the contrary, runners who prioritize rest days tend to gain more progress over time.