Let The Muscles Rest
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
One thing about working out - people normally want results FAST and ignore the recommended "recovery" period, which is "once every 48 hours".
For example they'd workout 6 days a week, hoping to keep building up muscles (or burn off calories as the case may be). However, it is also important that you should REST. If you also train for muscle gain to assist in fat burning, then resting is when the muscle growth happens.
I'm sure everyone has gone through this before - the first time you work out, you get muscle aches the next few days. Yeah that's because you haven't been working out, and the muscles aren' t expecting the stress you're going to put them through. Because of this, you have "overloaded" your muscles and they are scrambling to get the building materials from the food you eat to "make more muscle" to handle future loads of this magnitude. In the mean time, they ache to tell you to "lay off dude! Under construction!"
So once you start to exercise regularly, the muscle aches SHOULD go away. Sometimes this confuses newbies (me included) that have been told that "muscle aches are good - means your muscles are growing".
Like all living things, I learned that muscles adapt. Once they "realised" that you're going to work out more regularly, they'll be more adaptive and muscles won't ache anymore. Or at least, not as much.
When they don't ache, it doesn't mean they aren't growing. What it means is that they've adapted and you should let them rest to recover and build more mass. You'll notice this when you start to be able to lift larger loads, or carry the same load for longer periods.
That's the point of this post - to remind me that I need to rest too, to let the muscles recover and adapt.
For example they'd workout 6 days a week, hoping to keep building up muscles (or burn off calories as the case may be). However, it is also important that you should REST. If you also train for muscle gain to assist in fat burning, then resting is when the muscle growth happens.
I'm sure everyone has gone through this before - the first time you work out, you get muscle aches the next few days. Yeah that's because you haven't been working out, and the muscles aren' t expecting the stress you're going to put them through. Because of this, you have "overloaded" your muscles and they are scrambling to get the building materials from the food you eat to "make more muscle" to handle future loads of this magnitude. In the mean time, they ache to tell you to "lay off dude! Under construction!"
So once you start to exercise regularly, the muscle aches SHOULD go away. Sometimes this confuses newbies (me included) that have been told that "muscle aches are good - means your muscles are growing".
Like all living things, I learned that muscles adapt. Once they "realised" that you're going to work out more regularly, they'll be more adaptive and muscles won't ache anymore. Or at least, not as much.
When they don't ache, it doesn't mean they aren't growing. What it means is that they've adapted and you should let them rest to recover and build more mass. You'll notice this when you start to be able to lift larger loads, or carry the same load for longer periods.
That's the point of this post - to remind me that I need to rest too, to let the muscles recover and adapt.
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Labels: burn fat, rest, workout
