| Hi Friend,
“Go hard or go home!” I’m sure you’re familiar with the often-used phrase. I’m also sure, many of you follow this muscle building mantra believing it’s the only way to stimulate growth.
And you’d be right... kinda.
Because while it’s true you've got to put in some serious effort to grow, this snappy saying flat-out ignores one major forgotten factor: RECOVERY!
Why is recovery so important?
It’s simple: without recovery, you are doomed in your quest to build muscle. In fact, without recovery, you’ll likely make no progress at all.
But hang on… you take days off from the gym a couple of times a week, don’t you? Isn’t that enough time for recovery?
Uh-huh. Not so. After months and months spent pounding your body under the heavy pig iron, you require more than just one or two days off from your training.
Taking a Week Off
Taking a week off from your workouts is a great place to start on the road to recovery. Not only will this contribute to your constant progress in the gym, but it will boost your general health and wellbeing.
But won’t you lose your hard-won gains?
That’s a common fear.
Many trainees are scared to death their muscles will shrivel up and they will “decondition” if they take a week off. Well, trust me, that won’t happen. Science shows it takes around 3-4 weeks of total inactivity for your muscles to atrophy.
Light Weeks
The benefits of light weeks and taking time off is fast gaining acceptance in the fitness community. Respected strength coach Dan John is a fan and routinely factors light weeks into his training.
Dan has this to say:
“I like three hard and one easy week. I examined my journals (all the way back to 1971) and found that I naturally do it with illness, injury or crappy efforts. So, I decided to just learn to plan it. It is really a hard thing to teach young athletes, but the same holds true with everybody… I can almost predict when a person is going to crash in a program by just looking at the structure of the month after month after month of expected training. Life is not linear.”
Dan is right. Which is why taking time off is one of the best things you can do.
Plan a light week into your program, and not only will you avoid future training plateaus, but you'll return to the gym energised and raring to go hard again.
Until next time,
Squat for Glory!
Lee
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