MUSCLE GROWTH OCCURS AWAY FROM THE GYM
Muscle growth does not take place while you are lifting weights. While you need to lift weights to obviously build the muscle, it needs the proper recovery to make this happen. Therefore, muscle growth occurs outside and away from the gym. Lifting weights temporarily weakens the muscle by tearing and damaging the muscle fibers of the muscle bellies, and with adequate nutrition and proper rest, the muscles grow back bigger and stronger to better adapt to the stressing condition you’ve placed upon it. The main thing to take away from this is that muscle growth absolutely necessitates sufficient nutrition and optimal rest. Therefore, you can train like an animal, but if you don’t train, rest, and eat smart, you will most likely not see any of the gains you desire.
A training regimen should ensue to pursue one goal: To live a healthy lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle inherently encompasses leanness, stronger bones, stronger functional (and consequently, vanity) muscles, a more efficient heart, and social and psychological benefits. So in no sense should you be training for the sake of itself. The purpose of lifting weights is to improve yourself. Nowhere in your agenda does it state, “I want to get injured, lose muscle mass, gain body fat, and increase stress.” Because if you start training for the sake of itself and go to the gym 6 or 7 days a week, that is what could result. We want the opposite, so nutrition, proper time off from the gym and adequate rest will place your body in an environment in which it will flourish into a muscle building machine!
Your liver and kidneys get taxed each time you lift weights. So instead of envisioning your workouts as chest day or back day, do realize that Monday is chest and kidney day and Wednesday is shoulders and kidney day and so on down the line. Furthermore, your heart rate will speed up in response to the added stress you gave it. There is just so much your organs can take on a daily basis. When your organs don’t function properly, your body responds in a negative way in which it will act sluggish and provide you with lower intensity throughout the day. Moreover, your organs are essential in breaking down macronutrients, so vitamins, minerals, and protein will not be distributed to your muscles properly.
In addition, lifting too frequently could increase levels of myostatin. Myostatin is a growth differentiation factor that limits muscle tissue growth to prevent muscles from becoming too big. Inadequate rest and time off from the gym will result in increased myostatin levels, which will inhibit muscular development.
Lifting too much within your workouts in terms of going to failure on too many sets may negatively affect you as well. You need to stimulate your muscles and not annihilate them.
Lifting too hard for too long could hurt you physically and psychologically as well. You cannot train for months at a time without a break. Your muscles and organs need a break from the gym. When you train specific body parts, all body parts are involved. So when you are training chest, your triceps and front delts are being worked. When you t