Rest and Recovery is Crucial for Muscle Growth in Bodybuilding

Rest and Muscle Recovery is very important in Bodybuilding in order to build the most Muscle Growth possible. When done incorrectly, it might be the number one reason why beginners never see any results. There are key times you have to rest when building muscle. Knowledge of how long and when is very important to the growth of your muscles.

The Times you need to Rest are…

• Rest Time Between Sets
• Rest Time Between Workouts - Days
• The Length of your Workout
• Rest Time Between Sets in Circuit Training

Rest Time Between Sets

The time between sets is very important and changes depending on whether you want to build muscle or tone your muscle.

When building Muscle Mass, your rest time between sets should be between 60 to 90 seconds. You don’t want to go past 90 seconds cause the muscle will recover too much and will already be starting to heal. Below 60 seconds will not allow the muscle to recover enough to push out the energy required to break down the cells.

When you want to tone your muscles or want to lift to burn calories, a good rest time is 30 seconds. This is ideal because you will allow the muscle to recover enough so it isn’t completely fatigue and you don’t allow your body to fully recover giving you a more of an aerobic exercise.

Rest Time Between Workouts - Days

The rest interval between days is also important. A lot of people are so gun ho that they workout everyday and do the same muscle groups day after day. This is the worst thing you can do because you will shrink your muscles instead of growing them.

When you work your muscles to the maximum, your muscles need time to recover. After you workout, you have teared down the muscle cells and actually split the cells in two. When you rest, the two new cells grow from the protein in your body and become bigger. If you do not give the muscle enough time to fully recover, you cease the growth progress and the two new cells remain small. That’s how your muscle will shrink. It’s always good to give about 48 hours of rest between muscle groups. You can even go up to 72 hours when you are first starting out. It is always better to rest more then to rush into your next workout.

The Length of your Workout

Since we are talking about time periods as well as rest periods, the total time of your workout plays a roll. You should not workout more then an hour straight when lifting weights. This is because you will start to lose the necessary energy that you need to push those weights to your max. When you are not pushing as hard as you can, you are not getting the full benefit of your workout.

Rest Time Between Sets in Circuit Training

When you are doing circuit training, you will need a little bit more time of rest between the sets. Since you are doing between 5 to 9 exercises back to back without any rest for a set, you need to extend your rest period. I usually like to keep my rest period around two minutes between sets. This will give you the benefit of an aerobic exercise with the benefit of muscle growth.

For anyone who wants to maximize Rapid Muscle Growth while Bodybuilding and ensure gaining the most muscle in every workout will have to focus on the following key points…

• Workout Intensity
• Continuous Progress
• Muscle Confusion
• Diet
• Rest and Recovery

Workout Intensity

How hard you push yourself in every workout will have an affect on how much muscle you gain. My article on High Intensity Interval Training may help here. However, there is a point where you can push your muscles too far. When working out, you should feel a pump in your muscles. When reaching this pump feeling, you don’t want to push it too much harder. One way you can tell when you pushed you muscles too far is if you feel soreness in that particular muscle for the next couple of days.

Once you learn the correct intensity level, then the next step you need to take is to improve each exercise from the previous week. Progress is very important to the growth of muscles. If you don’t have any progress from week to week, you will not see any results.

Continuous Progress

You can improve your progress by increasing the weight or doing more reps or sets then you did the previous week. The funny thing about progress is it is easier to progress in the beginning but for most of us is harder to progress when we’ve been doing it for awhile. This is because once you have been doing the same thing over and over, your muscles will become adaptive to the routine and growth will become harder. One way to bypass this plateau is to do a system called Muscle Confusion.

Confuse Those Muscles

Muscle Confusion is a system which allows you to bust through a bodybuilding plateau by changing up your routine over a period of time, such as from week to week.

When you hit a plateau, your body will start to slow your growth on your muscles because it is used to the stress of that particular exercises. If you hit the same muscle but attack it at a different angle or by doing different motions, you will confuse the muscle into grow again. For more information about breaking your bodybuilding plateau, read my article Info On Breaking Your Bodybuilding Plateau

Diet

Your diet plays a big role in the growth of your muscles. Make sure you eat plenty of protein throughout the day. Protein is what the muscles are made from. Carbohydrates are also important. Eating carbohydrates before you do you workout will give your body energy to do your exercises. It is the best form of energy that comes from food. Also, do not forget to take in your daily amount of fatty acids. When building muscle mass, fat can help. Just eat the right kind and don’t eat too much of it. Again, here are a few of my articles which may be of interest…
Foods For Muscle Growth
Foods for Fast Metabolism
Post Exercise Nutrition

Rest and Recovery

The final thing you need to do to have rapid muscle growth is allow enough time after workouts for rest. Recovery is a key part of muscle growth. If you workout everyday with the same muscles, you will not grow. In fact you will shrink your muscles. Allow around 48 to 72 hours before you workout the same muscle group.

Many Bodybuilders are so gun ho about the exercise that they do not give their body time for muscle recovery. Therefore, maximum muscle growth is not archived.

The purpose of bodybuilding is to get bigger muscles. In order to gain muscle growth, you need to tear down the muscles in each exercise so the cells will split. During this splitting, your muscles will shrink. Only later, will your muscles begin to grow. This is why muscle recovery is so important. When you skip this very important stage, you are skipping the Muscle Growth Process.

The reason why the muscle cells split is because the body has been damaged. In this damage stage, the body duplicates the cell to protect itself from the same type of damage again. That is why you have to push yourself harder every time you workout.

After you have recovered properly, your muscles are bigger and stronger. They are ready for the next intense bodybuilding session, so you need to be ready to push yourself harder then you did during the last workout. How do you do this… by being motivated and mentally prepared before you even start.

This means you can only begin on the same muscle when you have recovered fully. A lot of bodybuilders think the more time they spend exercising, the bigger the muscles will be. This is not true. It is not how many exercises you can squeeze into the week, but the quality of effort you put in when you exercise. After you have given it your all, you need to eat the right foods and rest the proper amount of time. How do you know when you have rested long enough? It usually take two to three days after a good workout for full muscle recovery.