Rest builds muscle


WEIGHT TRAINING IS SOMETHING
to ease into. Even if you want to, you shouldn’t life weights every day. It’s counterproductive. You need to give your muscles 48 hours between workouts-always, even as you progress. The skeletal muscles start to break down when exercised intensely more often than every other day. The day after intense exercise, bleeding and microscopic tearing can be seen in muscle fibres. That’s why you feel sore after a good workout. That sounds bad but it is not, because the muscles are much stronger when they heal.

Resting allows the muscles to rebuild so they are bigger and stronger than before. Exercising intensely when the muscles ache can cause injury and decrease performance, but waiting for the muscles to stop aching before exercising intensely again strengthens the muscles. This is good news. No pains is, well, no pain .

You should feel good after exercise. If you don’t, you may have worked out too  hard. Weight training workouts should be hard enough so that the muscles are somewhat sore the next day, but fully recovered the day after that. If your muscles ache for days, you probably worked out too hard.

With all this in mind, you should plan to lift weights about two or three times a week, always giving yourself a day in between workouts. If you feel you really must, you can lift every day so long as don’t work on the same muscles. Some advanced weight lifters work on the upper body one day and lower body the next without any trouble. Also, just because you shouldn’t lift weights every day doesn’t mean you can’t get in some aerobics or stretching on the other days. Unlike lifting weights, you can stretch or do aerobic exercise every say without a problem.

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