After waking up on Sunday morning stiff and sore from the week’s intense gym workouts, you decide you’re going to take a break. Satisfied with your decision, you begin scrolling through Instagram, only to see photo after photo of your friends’ weekend training sessions. Next thing you know, you’re dragging your poor body off for a painful run, because you feel you have to.
Is this borderline obsessive amount of exercise necessary to see results? According to local fitness and nutrition influencer, Maxine of Sugar Free Sundays, no, it most certainly isn’t:
“Your muscles are in a constant state of fatigue, which means that your training session will not be of as high an intensity as if you were feeling fresh. Eventually, you get to a point where you cannot provide a sufficient training stimulus to grow muscle or strength because you are too tired.”
She goes on to say, “All you are doing by continuing to train is slowing down and prolonging your muscle recovery process, taxing your CNS, and totally impairing your ability to repair micro-traumas and make gains! There is no point in pushing your bod to this point!”
Instead, Max recommends adding an extra rest day or two to your workout routine, and monitoring how your body responds over a few weeks. “Pair this with enough sleep and loads of nutrient-dense food, and your body will thank you.”
There you have it. The key to ‘gains’ may actually be in doing less, hurrah!
If you have been overdoing it on the training and are feeling achy, take Releaf MSM with Curcumin, which has natural anti-inflammatory properties that may help relieve pain and maintain healthy joints and connective tissue.
