Allowing your muscles enough rest between work-outs is key for gaining muscle size. For those wanting that extra bulk, recovery is essential.
Weight Training
Weight training has numerous positive benefits, including improved mental and physical health. Weight training allows people to feel good about themselves, and their bodies. Once people start seeing the initial results of weight training, they want more. What guy doesn't want the ripped shoulders, biceps and chest? What woman doesn’t want the flat stomach and defined arms and legs? But the question becomes: how much is too much?
What You Should Know
While you lift weights, the muscles you target are being damaged physically and metabolically. Physically, muscles fibers are being torn, while at the same time, energy is being lost from the muscles. The body initially tries to heal and fix the damage, but it is a process that takes time. As Dr. John M Berardi states in his article, “Weight Lifting and Post Exercise Muscle Recovery,” as “this cycle of destruction and healing persists, normal muscle function is disrupted.” Thus, this is why people feel pain and soreness days after doing certain exercises.
What Every Weight Lifter Should Do
Though a proper diet and consumption of the right amounts of food will help to heal muscles, allowing the body to rest between work-outs is even more important. Dr. Berardi explains that in order for lifters to gain muscle mass, they must allow each targeted muscle to rest one week before another workout. “Without adequate recovery of calcium balance, muscle energy, and muscle protein content, your muscle force will be lower with each subsequent work-out, thereby reducing the quality of the work-out in terms of the weight lifted. This is certainly not the way to get stronger,” states Berardi. Thus, if you are still feeling sore and want to target the same muscle a few days later, take a day or two more to rest. It will only help.
The Benefits
If you are serious about weight training, taking time to rest may make you feel anxious. But think about it. What good are you doing to your body if it hasn’t fully recovered from a hard work-out? None. Replenish your body with nutrients and let it rest. I am sure you have had that point where you feel like your muscles aren’t getting any bigger, no matter how hard you lift. Well, maybe that is the problem; you are going too hard. In between work-outs get a massage, stretch, or apply heat or ice to those sore spots. An extra day or two off may be the trick to gaining the muscle you have always wanted.
Copyright David Marsh
