One time I was at the gym and a fellow who did not know what he was doing was jumping from exercise to exercise and machine to machine. I had a brief conversation with him and he told me "I'm gonna come to the gym everyday for 3 hours at a time cus I wanna get big", I did not caution him against it but it made me realize how misinformed some people are about building your body.
Most people think that the more you go to the gym and the longer you stay there the bigger you'll get, or that the more often you train a muscle the more it will grow, but this is far from correct. See, while most may think that we go to the gym to make our muscles grow, the fact is, we go to the gym to rip our muscle fibres apart. While we are at the gym what we want to do is tear the muscle fibres and engorge the muscles with blood so that the fascia, or tissue, around the muscle is broken down. When we go home, with proper nutrition and proper rest, that is when the body will heal the torn down muscles and will heal you bigger and stronger so that the body adapts to the increased stress you are putting upon it. So in essence, you grow muscles when you are resting, not when you are at the gym.
Now, many medical studies have shown that after weight training a muscle is healed within 36-72 hours depending on how hard the stress upon it was. I personally tend to lean to the far right of this spectrum. This means that if we break down a muscle, and go the next day to the gym to do it again as intensely, the muscle will not have healed by that time, and all we're doing is hindering recovery, thus, not allowing you to grow. So you can train with as much intensity as Mr. Olympia trains, but if you don't eat, sleep and recover properly, you will not maximize or make the gains that you were expecting. As with everything, there comes a point of diminishing returns.
So this brings us to the question, how often should I train?
And the answer is: everybody is different. I personally like training muscles twice a week with about 72 hours rest to each specific body part, but I have friends that do great on doing muscles once a week and some do them 3 times a week, you have many variables to factor in like nutrition, rest, and genetics. I lift weights 5 times a week as I find anything more is just overkill, but some people can do more and pack on muscle and some people grow great on only 3 days a week. I do think that training a body part 4+ times a week is overkill as it will not allow ample recovery if you are taking that muscle to full exhaustion.
Beginners should train their whole body with weights and use linear progression about 3-4 times a week with sessions of about 60-90 minutes, intermediates and advanced lifters don't need to ask this question because they should already know how to listen to their body and this will tell them their answer.
As for cardio, I do cardio on my off days so I never have a true day to just not do anything physical, but if you are truly pushing your body to its limits at the gym, some low intensity cardio will not "hinder" your recovery.
If you guys want me to write about a specific topic, experience or a specific supplement on this blog please let me know, your input and feedback is appreciated, comments can be made anonymous!
Most people think that the more you go to the gym and the longer you stay there the bigger you'll get, or that the more often you train a muscle the more it will grow, but this is far from correct. See, while most may think that we go to the gym to make our muscles grow, the fact is, we go to the gym to rip our muscle fibres apart. While we are at the gym what we want to do is tear the muscle fibres and engorge the muscles with blood so that the fascia, or tissue, around the muscle is broken down. When we go home, with proper nutrition and proper rest, that is when the body will heal the torn down muscles and will heal you bigger and stronger so that the body adapts to the increased stress you are putting upon it. So in essence, you grow muscles when you are resting, not when you are at the gym.
Now, many medical studies have shown that after weight training a muscle is healed within 36-72 hours depending on how hard the stress upon it was. I personally tend to lean to the far right of this spectrum. This means that if we break down a muscle, and go the next day to the gym to do it again as intensely, the muscle will not have healed by that time, and all we're doing is hindering recovery, thus, not allowing you to grow. So you can train with as much intensity as Mr. Olympia trains, but if you don't eat, sleep and recover properly, you will not maximize or make the gains that you were expecting. As with everything, there comes a point of diminishing returns.
So this brings us to the question, how often should I train?
And the answer is: everybody is different. I personally like training muscles twice a week with about 72 hours rest to each specific body part, but I have friends that do great on doing muscles once a week and some do them 3 times a week, you have many variables to factor in like nutrition, rest, and genetics. I lift weights 5 times a week as I find anything more is just overkill, but some people can do more and pack on muscle and some people grow great on only 3 days a week. I do think that training a body part 4+ times a week is overkill as it will not allow ample recovery if you are taking that muscle to full exhaustion.
Beginners should train their whole body with weights and use linear progression about 3-4 times a week with sessions of about 60-90 minutes, intermediates and advanced lifters don't need to ask this question because they should already know how to listen to their body and this will tell them their answer.
As for cardio, I do cardio on my off days so I never have a true day to just not do anything physical, but if you are truly pushing your body to its limits at the gym, some low intensity cardio will not "hinder" your recovery.
If you guys want me to write about a specific topic, experience or a specific supplement on this blog please let me know, your input and feedback is appreciated, comments can be made anonymous!
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