Out of nowhere this gym bro asks me, "Jtrain! Have you ever written a blog post about how many days rest you should take?"
And that question hit me with so much inspiration that I thought, you know what? That's what my next post will be on. So here we go!
I've discussed the importance of rest and sleep in a previous post located here. I always tell people that sleep is the most underrated workout supplement of all time, and that the amount of sleep you get can be directly proportional to how successful you are at gaining muscle, staying healthy, and preventing injury.
Resting muscle groups is also important. It's cool and all to tell people how much of a beast you are because you do bench press 5 days a week (I'm looking at you frat boys), but allowing your muscle groups time to take in the damage you just caused not only allows it time to heal, but also allows you to focus on other muscle groups throughout the week and get a complete workout.
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| Source: Flickr/ Navy_NADAP/ No Changes Made |
But the most obvious concern when it comes to resting muscles is injury. I've seen guys during my time at the gym talk as if someone killed a loved one when discussing some muscle or joint they blew out by lifting with unnecessary weight or not resting efficientl, and how they've never been the same since.
Resting and healing is as much a part of bodybuilding as lifting weights and nutrition. If you have a fantastic workout with fantastic nutrition but get poor rest you've just given yourself a poor workout.
Muscle isn't necessarily the result of resistance stimulation so much as it's a body's defense against future muscle tears in the form of repair. Seeing massive amounts of muscle is like seeing a huge mass of biological band-aids all over the body.
So how often should you rest a muscle group? Personally, my workout philosophy has ALWAYS been focusing on working out one muscle group into oblivion on a particular day of the week and then resting it for a week. That muscle may be recruited during other compound exercises throughout the week, but as far as specifically targeting and focusing on a muscle group goes, it's one day out of the week per muscle group.
But a week isn't necessarily the minimum amount of time you should take to rest a muscle group. A lot of my bodybuilding advice comes from my roots of compiling some sort of a "meta-analysis" of various online videos, forum discussions, scientific knowledge, and experience in the gym. And using that method I've come to the conclusion that while resting a muscle group for a week has served me well, you could probably go 3 days in between working out a particular muscle group and working it out again.
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| Don't lift heavy weight like this if your body can't handle it or hasn't been given the proper rest! Source: Flickr/ Chapendra/ No Changes Made |
A lot of things should be considered if you're thinking about doing that though. If your body is not used to working that muscle group out (like if you're just starting out with working out), you might need a longer amount of rest time before you start working it out with intensity again. And different muscle groups might need different times to heal. So keep that in mind.
The most important thing to do is to listen to your body. If you feel you can keep lifting with that muscle group and you've given it proper time to heal, then go nuts. But if you feel like something is off or that things aren't right, it's best to give it a rest or at the very least not give it as much stress as you normally would to feel it out and sense what it is capable of. Not looking like a beast one day is worth the alternative of damaging something that could put you out of the gym for a long time and ruin your progress.
So make sure you're giving each of your muscle groups proper rest. Train hard on the days where a particular muscle group is on your agenda, but don't deprive it of the rest it needs to heal and grow stronger. Rest is just as important, and in a lot of ways more important, than the actual lift for your body. So lift smart and don't negatively overwork your muscle groups throughout the week. You'll feel better, lift harder, and still have good results!
-Jtrain
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