Sarah’s Blog

DAY 1

The first thing I’m going to tell you is so simple, it’s almost silly. You may not even believe that it’s true. Or you have heard it before but not paid it too much attention, or forgotten it somewhere in the meanders of your mind. In fact, most of these 5 tips are simple little things. Put them together, and you get a powerful tool.

For today I’m just going to tell you to sleep. You got that right, rest is of utmost importance. You may think that the work you do in the gym is the most important thing, that your muscles grow there, but they don’t. Sure, you see added volume when you leave from when you walked into the gym, but that’s just the blood flow, the famous pump.

The actual growth comes when you rest, when you are not beating your muscles up and forcing them to rip and tear over some pieces of iron. It is at rest, that the micro tears are repaired, making the muscle a little thicker at that particular point.

Remember when you were a kid and skinned your knees, badly I mean, the type of scratch that was a little beyond a scratch, and healed as a scar. Look at that scar now. See any difference between it and the surrounding skin? I’ll bet you can see it’s a little thicker, right?

If you ever broke a bone, and could see an X-ray of the mended area, you’d see it too, the fracture zone is a little thicker, and stronger, than the rest of that bone.

Your micro-torn muscle tissue reacts in the exact same way. The tear mends stronger than the tissue surrounding it. However, unless you get enough rest and sleep, you will not have the energy required to mend, and the next time you hit the gym your muscles won’t be healed up enough to be that little bit stronger, you end up feeling tired, over trained, and eat away at your muscle tissue to keep going.

So make sure you get your rest, both in the shape of a good night’s sleep and enough rest days between workouts of each specific muscle or muscle group, and take a break every 8-12 weeks. If you let your body repair itself naturally, you’ll see the results will come almost by themselves.