Some underlying Principles - III

A crop takes time to grow, you cannot fast-forward it!
Till now we have been talking about stimulating our muscles to grow. Now let us give it time to grow!

The harder we train, the better the stimulus for growth (provided our technique is perfect). But the actual growth takes place when we are not training! It is during the recovery period that our muscles adapt to the increasing stress we put on it…and it grows!! But if we do not give our muscles the time they need to recover, they will not be ready for the next session, and we would be actually stopping its growth by overtraining!

Different muscles of our body recover at different rates. But a 48 hour recovery time is deemed sufficient for the most part. This means, if I have exercised my biceps today, I should not exercise my biceps till day after tomorrow if I want them to grow!

Stop regularly on a long highway journey!
It is important to regulate the time taken to rest between two sets.

When I do my sets too fast with little time taken to rest in between my blood supply falls behind in washing out chemicals causing fatigue and delivering oxygen to my muscles. My poor muscles are not able to work to their maximum for no fault of theirs! Also, I tend to take the help of associate muscle groups to perform the exercise – wrong technique!

However, if I train too slowly, my heart rate slows down, and I lose my warm up!

So how long should I rest between sets? A one-minute rest between sets is enough for me to take me through all my sets. More than three minutes can cool me down too much.

Stretch the string tight, your arrow will fly farther!
Most people going to the gym do not consider stretching important! Quite the contrary! The un-stretched muscle has a little less rage of motion than the maximum. In other words, it is stiffer. So if a heavy load stretches it too hard, it is more likely to get damaged, resulting in a sprain or strain.

Also, stretching gives us a larger range of motion – more complete exercise for the muscle! It also improves flexibility.

That was about stretching before beginning our sets. After we finish exercising, our muscles tend to remain contracted, reducing the amount of blood that can wash through the muscle fibers. This means less nutrients to our muscles, and slower recovery before our next workout!

Stretching out those tired and tight muscles after our workout recovers them faster and gets them ready for the next attack!