When it comes to muscle-building, how often you train and how often you rest are just as important as what you do when training and exercising. This is because the muscle-building part of the process happens not in the gym, but when you’re resting. During exercise, muscles are strained and slightly torn. During recovery, they are rebuilt to be bigger and stronger than before.
Training Frequency
You should do some exercise every single day. Even on your rest days, it’s important to do something active to keep your entire body moving and healthy. However, you don’t want to focus on the same muscle or muscle group too close together because this can lead to muscle soreness or even injury. That’s why having a training schedule is vital to your success as a muscle-builder.
Here are a couple of sample training schedules that will help you avoid working the same body part too close together:
5-Day Split
This type of training schedule has you focus on a different muscle group every day for 5 days, then take 2 days to rest. Most muscle-builders that follow this schedule group muscles this way: back and abs, legs, arms, chest, and shoulders.
What’s nice about this is that you can push yourself further with each muscle group since it has a full week to recover. However, it does require commitment.
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3-Day Split
This exercise schedule involves splitting the muscle groups into three days. You can then do them spread out over the course of a week with rest days in between, or you can do them twice in a week and have only one day to rest.
Typically, you will divide the muscle groups as follows: shoulders, chest, and triceps; biceps and back; and legs.
Whole Body Split
With this routine, you will only work out 3 days every week, which makes it great for someone with a busy schedule. This works because you do exercises for every part of the body every day you work out and then have rest days in between.
The downside to this is that you won’t be able to push individual areas too hard since you don’t have as much recovery time for each muscle.
Rest Days
What you do on your rest days will determine how successful your exercises are, since this is when muscle building really occurs.
If you don’t work just as hard on your body these days, then you risk missing out on muscles being built up. For that reason, it’s vital to keep your muscle-building goals always in the forefront of your mind.
The first thing you need to do on rest days is to continue eating well. You need to be getting a good balance of protein, fat, and carbs every day in order to have the energy you need to work out and the nutrients you need for your body to grow your muscles.
You should also do some light exercise to keep your blood flowing and your muscles moving, but without straining them.
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