As the weather gets colder and the end of the regular football season gets closer, many student athletes may be looking forward to the start of winter and spring sports.

These athletes will quickly transition from football to basketball in the upcoming weeks and still others will transition to either soccer, baseball, tennis or track in the spring.

While being a multi-sport athlete can be beneficial health wise, don’t forget that it’s important to set up rest days at least once or twice a week.

When I was in high school, I competed in cross-country during the fall, basketball in the winter and soccer in the spring. As a person who was always involved in some sort of physical activity, I thought that an injury could never happen to me until one day, it did.

It was during my senior year while I was training for an upcoming cross-country race. Midway through my daily run, my legs gave out suddenly and I couldn’t walk, much less run. After I visited the doctor, he said I had suffered a hamstring injury due to heavy-stress and I would have to miss the entire basketball season. I was devastated. I couldn’t believe that I wouldn’t get a chance to suit up and represent my school one last time.

Also, one of my friends played baseball year-round, as he was part of a travel team during the summer and winter and played for his high school team during the spring.

One day, he experience pain in his throwing arm. The pain didn’t seem to go away, but he ignored it.

As the pain got worse, he went to the doctor.

The diagnosis was that he would have to undergo a Tommy John surgery in order to be able to play baseball again.

According to a study by the American Journal of Sports Medicine, athletes between 15-and-19-years old accounted for 57 percent of Tommy John’s surgeries in the United States between 2007 and 2014.

I’m not saying that participating in multiple athletic events is bad, but my advice is to rest, take the day off.

Your body needs its rest in order to perform at the highest level.