How to Rest Your Muscles and Gain More Muscle Mass

Ever heard of muscle recovery? Many people do not know that our muscles grow while they are recovering, not while we are doing the exercise itself. As a result, many beginners end up overworking. Overworking means to train too often till the point where your muscles are unable to recover from their previous workouts. By not allowing your muscles to recover, you are limiting its growth. Hence, I will share with you one way to increase your workout sessions in a week, without overworking. The key here is to enhance your muscle recovery pace. By ensuring that your muscles recover fast, you will be able to continue your next muscle building workout session as soon as possible.

Recovery Week - Have you ever heard that taking one whole week of rest can help you gain muscle mass? This is one of the options to muscle recovery. Every 10 weeks of body building, you should take one week off. During this one week, you will do nothing except light exercises to relax your body. Without this recovery time, you will be overworking your muscles. When overworking occurs, you can expect to hit a plateau really soon.

Sufficient nutrients - Nutrition should never be forgotten. Without the correct nutrients, you will never make any progress even if you have the best coach in the world. This logic is simple. Our body is made up of the things we eat. Without the correct nutrients, your muscles will not be able to grow. Protein is usually the main nutrient that aids muscle recovery. However, just taking sufficient protein will not be enough. You will have to watch your diet on the whole. Take 90% whole foods and at least 65% of your meals in a day should be from high quality food. High quality food contains the vitamins and proteins required while keeping low on the fats.

Sleep - Lastly, a critical key towards enhancing muscle recovery would be sleeping. Sleeping is the time when your body recovers from the fatigue during the day. Hence, you should commit yourself to sufficient sleep as well.  Trading in some party time for sleeping will help you gain muscle mass fast. Our growth hormones increase while we are sleeping. Take at least 8 hours of sleep in a day. However, if you do sleep before midnight, you can sleep a little less. During the day, try to take power naps when you can. Just a 20 minute nap will boost your muscle recovery and energy levels.

Here’s the summary of what we have been talking about. Basically, take one whole week off your schedule to do light exercises for recovery, take 5-6 high quality meals a day that provides you with sufficient nutrition, and do not sacrifice your sleep for some party time. Poor sleep causes fat gain as well. Of what use would muscles be if they're covered by fats?