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If you struggle to make progress in your weightlifting efforts, you may want to take a look at your recovery strategies. You've probably read a lot about how to improve your workout and what the latest supplement craze is. Likewise, you probably talk about these things with your buddies at the gym, but you may have been avoiding one of the most important aspects of building muscle. The recovery phase is crucial to success in building muscle, even though it isn't always a popular topic.
If we understand how muscle grows, then we know why the recovery phase is so important. If you want to force your body to grow muscle, you first have to give your body a reason to build it. Your body would rather not be bothered with building muscle. Your body has to be given a reason to grow new muscle.
When you lift a heavy weight and challenge your muscle beyond its previous limits, muscle fibers are torn and must be repaired. Your body will rebuild the muscle with more mass and strength than before in order to prevent this kind of stress from recurring in the future. What does this have to do with the recovery phase?
Muscles must be given enough time to rebuild before they are put under this kind of pressure again. This requires adequate raw materials from your diet, but it also requires significant amounts of rest. You must limit the frequency of your workouts to make sure your body is ready, and many experts recommend only a few hours of training per week. In many cases, less time in the gym means more muscle.
Training to exhaustion, for example, is usually considered over training and can put a heavy strain on your nervous system and immune system, not to mention your muscles themselves. Because your nervous and immune systems take longer than your muscles to recover, you need to be very careful to avoid over training in the gym. You'll probably find yourself overdoing it from time to time, but be careful not to make this a habit.
By following this simple but crucial advice, you can avoid long-term injury or illness from over training. Moreover, you'll have a better time progressing through your workouts and building muscle from week to week if you give yourself enough time to recover between workouts.