OVERTRAINING AND RECUPERATION

The harder you work your body , the more time it takes to recover and recuperate from that training. Rest and recuperation is very important because although you stimulate growth by training but it is during the subsequent period of recuperation that actual growth and adaption take place. That's why most bodybuilders frequently overcome sticking points by resting more rather than training hard or more often.

Overtraining occurs when train a muscle too often to allow it to fully recuperate. You hear bodybuilders talk about tearing the muscle down and then letting it rebuild itself but this is not physiologically accurate. There can be small amount of tissue damage during heavy exercise and it is this damage that is associated with the residual muscular soreness. But the soreness is a side effect and not the primary reasons the muscles need to recuperate after heavy training.

A number of complex biochemical process accompany strenuous muscular contraction. The process of fueling the muscular contraction results the build up of toxic waste such as lactic acid. And during the exercise the energy stored in the muscle in form of glycogen is used up.

The body requires time to restore the chemical balance of the muscle cells , clear out the residual waste products and restock the depleted stores of glycogen. But another factor is even more important : Time is needed for the cells to the stimulus of the exercise and to grow. After all bodybuilders is all about making muscles grow. If you overtrain a muscle forcing it to work too hard and too quickly then you are not giving it a chance to grow and your progress will be slow.

Different muscles recover from exercise at different rates. The biceps recover the fastest. The lower back muscles recover the slowest taking about a hundred hours to completely recuperate after a heavy workout. In most cases giving a muscle rest of 48 hours is very important which means skipping a day after training a muscle before training it again.

Basic training involves only medium levels of intensity , so the time needed for recuperation is shorter. Once you move on to advanced training the higher amount of intensity will be needed in order to overcome the greater resistance of the body to change and growth. There is one other factor : Trained muscles recover faster than the untrained muscles. So the better you get at bodybuilding , the faster your recovery will be and more intense your training program will become.