Want to build muscle? Then rest up! An important ingredient to muscle building is rest. A simple way to think about it is that your muscles don’t grow in the gym, they grow while your resting, recovering. Too many trainees have the other attitude that the more time they spend in the gym the more muscle they will build, and the greater the rate in which the muscle building effects will take place.

Ironically, the opposite tends to happen. They build less muscle, and they do so at a very slow rate. The reason being that the trainee is continually breaking down his muscles, and wearing down his body’s own recuperative process. Training hard every day, continually triggering or firing your muscles, but never allowing them the muscle building rest they need, and deserve, does not give them the opportunity to recover and build back up. Instead they are again pounded upon the next day (or even the same day for those trainees engaged in the non productive practice of twice daily training) thus interfering with the growth and recovery process.

There are indeed a number of individuals who do well with everyday training. These individuals tend to either be young, having just begun their muscle building journey, or they have incredible recovery capabilities, and above average genetics for muscle building, or they are taking performance enhancement drugs to greatly aid in their body’s recovery abilities. These individuals can get away with everyday, frequent workouts, and pack on the muscle to boot. But for the young trainees, as they build more muscle there tends to come a point where in order to continue their muscle building progress they will need to decrease their workout frequency and allow for greater recovery time. The same goes for the performance enhanced drug user.

Once his cycle ends, or he comes off the drugs, he will no longer be able to continue the workout frequency and recovery ability that the drugs had enabled him. The genetically gifted trainee tends to continue his frequent workout regimen with satisfactory results, though diminished over time and adding extra rest days tend to increase their muscle building efforts as well.

A good muscle building routine to begin with is a standard 3 day a week regimen. Training each body part once a week, splitting the body three ways. For instance , Monday could be chest, shoulders, and triceps. Wednesday could look like Back and Biceps. And Friday would be Legs, or as us hardcore dungeon lifters refer to, “Dreaded Leg Day”. From this point the trainee can determine his level of recovery ability, while still building muscle. The routine does not overly tax recovery ability and at the same time the muscles are being worked frequently.

By monitoring ones lifts through the use of a training log, the trainee can see his progress and determine whether extra rest days or needed or perhaps more frequent workouts could be tolerated or the body could be split in a different fashion. A variety of routines are available for the trainee to experiment with until he finds the ideal for his muscle building goals.

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