Yesterday I explained the misguided notion that you should be stronger and bigger at every workout. (Photo of Jonathan Lawson by Michael Neveux)
But a tremendous gain of 20 pounds of muscle in a year, which would transform your physique, is only a gain of .05 pounds of muscle a day. That’s not even a half pound of muscle every seven days…
Not likely to show up in the mirror, on the scale or as a strength gain at every workout. If you do the math, that’s only 1.7 pounds of muscle a month spread out over your entire body.
Again, this is not to discourage you but to give you the truth so that you will be patient and consistent…
And you must understand recovery. As you know, muscle growth happens after your workout, not during…
Let’s say you do a hard workout, and your body can repair the damage in two days. Then you allow another day for growth to occur. Perfect.
Now the muscles you trained should be bigger and perhaps stronger at your next workout on the fourth day, even if it’s not by a visible amount…
But what if the damage took longer to repair for any number of reasons—a night of erratic sleep, alcohol consumption, not enough nutrients to repair the damage…
Or what if you created excess damage with extra sets or pushed to the extreme on more than a few sets. That can lengthen recovery time and even trigger systemic nervous system trauma.
Now your gain train is off the rails. If you work out on the fourth day, you’re not recovered—damage is still being repaired and growth hasn’t happened…
You will essentially compound the damage from the first workout…
In other words, there is a delicate balance between muscle damage and recovery time—too much of either and muscles can shrink. Dreaded atrophy can happened because…
1) You trained again before full recovery, as in the above scenario
2) You waited too long after full recovery to train—growth happened but reverted back to baseline due to too much rest.
The only time you should train again is after damage is repaired and supercompensation (growth) has occurred. If you train too soon or wait too long, your growth can regress. Could this be why your gains are so slow or even nonexistent?
Tomorrow you’ll see how to make your best mass gains possible so you don’t become stagnant—or worse, the incredible shrinking bodybuilder.
Latest Release: Get the ideal exercise for each muscle, the best add-on moves for ultimate mass, complete 35-minute workouts, exercise start/finish photos and details on building muscle fast and efficiently in Old Man, Young Muscle.
And you still get The Muscle-On, Belly-Gone “Diet” ebook FREE for a limited time when you add Old Man, Young Muscle to your mass-building library. Go HERE.
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman
Former Editor in Chief, Iron Man Magazine
www.X-Rep.com
Recommended
NO MORE SHOULDER PAIN
Shoulder pain can affect your workouts forever. That’s not good!
That’s why we’re recommending advice from injury specialist Rick Kaselj, MS. His tips can help make your shoulders nearly bullet-proof.
Here are a few general tips from Rick (he goes into more detail in his program)…
Top 5 Tips To Bullet-Proof Your Shoulders
- Build Tension in Your Lats. When doing shoulder exercises, activate your lats and keep your shoulders happy.
- Prime Up Your Muscles. Most people do a warm-up that just lubricates the joint, but you need to activate and turn on all the muscles in your upper body.
- Technique, Technique, Technique. This is the number one reason why people injure their shoulders. You can’t go to the gym every day and work on your max lift.
- Watch Out for Fatigue. Cooking your smaller muscles in your shoulder complex, and that increases the risk of shoulder injury and pain.
- Work on Your Shoulder Blade Muscles. Many strength coaches will say you’re wasting your time on this, but if you want to have bullet-proof shoulders, you need to work on them.
Get all of Rick’s tips and tricks for pain-free workouts below: