Modern programs workouts involve almost spending the night in the gym. Three days a week is considered the absolute minimum, and most programs are four or five workouts per week. Split system workouts are structured as follows: two days of work and a day of rest, three days of work and a day of rest, five days of work and two days of rest, six days of work and one day of rest. Sometimes it is recommended to go to the gym twice a day. For each part of the body, there are eight, ten, twelve or fifteen sets and two or three exercises, or even more! Such frequent and strenuous training is a common practice among professional bodybuilders. These genetically gifted (and steroid-using) bodybuilders may indeed benefit from it, but we amateurs are wired differently. If I talk about sets of eight exercises that you need to do twice a week (quite normal program for a beginner), then bodybuilders, brought up on modern literature, will simply burst out laughing. And if I start offering complexes of five, four, three or even two exercises that are performed no more than twice a week, then I will simply be considered abnormal. Meanwhile, only programs reduced to the limit can benefit the amateur! Today, it is believed that training should take from one and a half to two hours and be repeated three to four times a week in order to total time spent in the gym was at least six hours a week. Moreover, this minimum is supposedly suitable only for beginners, while they have not yet "taken the matter seriously." If popular methods were effective (I'm only talking about genetically average and non-steroid-using bodybuilders), then we'd already have thousands, if not millions, of Schwarzeneggers and Yates. However, the sad truth is that popular training methods have a frighteningly low efficiency. This confirms my personal experience, my observations, my communication with huge amount bodybuilders. It is absolutely necessary to promote simplified programs with a small number of workouts per week. And this is putting it mildly: it's time to sound the alarm! After all, we are all simply fooled by absolutely useless systems!

Simple programs are needed not only for beginners. No, most average bodybuilders should use them throughout their entire athletic life. Of course, I'm not talking about a single version of the training scheme, but the exercises themselves should remain simple and basic. Few casual amateurs, even after many years of training, reach the stage where they can move on to "finishing" programs from isolation movements.

If this is the first time you hear about the need for simple "truncated" programs, then you need to understand: the effective training methodology for typical amateurs is fundamentally different from the methods of professionals and therefore, only at first glance, it may seem absurd.

No amount of training and no diet will help you increase muscle size if you neglect rest and recovery. Even if you choose a reduced program (two sets for each exercise), you will not succeed if you go to the gym too often.

Workout three times a week

Typically, bodybuilders are advised to perform exercises for all parts of the body three times a week. For many years I have heard the same advice: train, for example, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I myself believed in their reasonableness until I read an article by Mike Mentzer in which he suggested trying less frequent workouts. It wasn't until I stopped going to the gym three times a week that I started to make some progress. As I became more experienced and developed the ability to train more intensely, I felt that even two workouts a week (if done to the maximum load, including deadlifts and squats) is too much for me. In this sense, I am no different from most other typical amateurs, for whom two really intense workouts per week is also too much, even if they do reduced sets of 3-4 exercises. And some amateurs cannot achieve a result at all if they perform more than four exercises. Moreover, in order to get along with dead center, they need to perform each exercise every five, six or even seven days. Since two workouts per week (with regular exercises) is often too much for the amateur, it is better to average three workouts every two weeks. For some amateurs, it will be even more effective to perform each of the basic exercises only once a week. You will not find such recommendations in the popular literature, although the application of these instructions in practice gives the mass such an impetus that amateurs do not even dare to dream of!

If you train three times a week

With full dedication in every workout, the average bodybuilder is usually unable to achieve growth if he does full-body exercises three times a week. If during the week you change the overall load on the body, the likelihood of success increases. For example, if you do a "heavy" workout on Monday, an "easy" workout on Wednesday, and an "intermediate" workout on Friday, you will only be fully "exhausted" once a week. This significantly increases the chances of success. The words "heavy", "light" and "medium" have a relative meaning, so they need to be clarified. Suppose, for example, that John can do ten squats with a 150 kg barbell, and George can do the same ten squats, but only with a weight of 100 kg. For John, squatting with a 120 kg bar is not a problem, and he will find it easy. And for George, a load of 120 kg will seem very heavy. To understand what "heavy", "medium" and "light" workouts are, let's take the load of the most intense, completely exhausting workout as 100 percent. If on Monday you squat six times with a weight of 140 kg and this is almost your limit, then we will assume that 140 kg x 6 is 100% for squats. For an "easy" day (Wednesday), 80% of the weight is suitable with the same number of repetitions - 110 kg x 6. The "average" load on Friday will be 90% of the maximum, that is, 125 kg x 6. (Instead of the scheme "100% - 80 % - 90%" you can use a scheme of two workouts per week with a load on the whole body, which is 100% on the first day and 80% -90% on the second.) Another option: distribute the most debilitating sets for different muscles across different days weekly cycle, so as not to perform all the "heavy" sets in one day. Then the whole body still receives a load three times a week, however, in each workout, only one thing is pushed to the limit. However, with this scheme, your body does not have days of "working rest", and the possibility of overwork is greater than with the usual division of training into "heavy", "light" and "medium".

Going to the gym three times a week can be very effective if you train differently and each exercise is performed either once a week or three times in two weeks. This scheme is fundamentally different from the generally accepted training of the whole body three times a week. I am convinced that typical amateurs who do not have much free time and not so great recovery capacity should not do sets of exercises for all muscle groups three times a week.

Personal example

When I was in my twenties, I lived with the belief that you can't "overwork" in bodybuilding. I followed this belief and exhausted myself with work in the gym. In every workout, I did full-body exercises, two sets maximum, and each of the exercises (there were only eight) only twice a week. But I still remember with horror what it cost me. I methodically harassed my body for months until it rebelled against it. Illness or injury forced me to take a short break. Then I would go wild on the bar and do a few short, very intense workouts, and then go back to the usual program - two workouts a week. And so it went on for two years. And that was before I got married and had children. At that time, I could sleep long and peacefully at night, and recovery of strength was much easier than at a later age. I brought each set to a complete collapse - the limit when the next repetition was not given to me even with the help of cheating. Then I asked my partner to help me and squeezed out three or four more forced reps. And in the end, as if all this was not enough, he did a few more negative repetitions: friends raised the bar, and I lowered it as slowly as possible. As a result, after every workout, I was completely exhausted. My whole body ached. It was real madness. I don’t know how I managed to withstand it for so long, despite the fact that neither the size of the muscles nor their strength increased in any way. It is unbelievable that I could give so much and receive almost nothing in return. And although I was still very far from being able to fully realize my genetic potential, and worked like crazy, there was no sense. When I got sick or injured, I willy-nilly stopped training for one to two weeks. I lost strength, and then managed to restore them to their former volume, but did not move a step further in terms of mass and strength. And for all the failures, I had only one explanation - it means that I did not train enough. And I decided to push even more.

Light at the end of the tunnel

Proper rest and recovery are associated with the right choice training schedule - not only their frequency itself, but also the frequency of training with a full load. We discussed the latter in detail in the previous chapter when we talked about cycles. Now let's talk about the overall frequency of training. If you remember my crazy youth, then I had to do this: the load had to be changed periodically, as described in the previous chapter. Deadlifts and squats should be performed only once a week, and other exercises - every four to five days. At each training session, I had to do no more than six exercises and not adhere to an overly rigid training schedule. Then I would work in full compliance with my recovery regimen. The frequency of training would be reasonable, not taken at random from an article or book by a random author.

It doesn't matter how hard you work out in the gym, how well you eat or sleep, but if you lift the bar too often, you won't see any decent progress. There is no optimal training frequency that works for everyone. It varies depending on the physical data of a person, his endurance, age, lifestyle, intensity of training, diet, quality of sleep and rest, as well as other factors.

What does recovery consist of?

Muscle growth requires two conditions. Firstly, this is a correctly selected load in training, and secondly, there are sufficiently large intervals between them so that the body can recover and grow. Recovery consists of two components. The first part is getting rid of physical fatigue, that feeling of complete "exhaustion" that occurs after every strenuous workout. Fatigue individual groups muscle is here only part of the overall fatigue of the body. Moreover, the emphasis on basic exercises - squats, deadlifts and bench presses - generates much more fatigue than the same number of isolated movements like leg extensions, hyperextensions or crossovers on blocks. After training, the most important thing for the body is to overcome this purely physical fatigue. Only after recovering from it, the body can move on to another component of recovery - muscle growth and an increase in strength, that is, to the so-called "overcompensation". In my youth I piled weariness upon weariness. Not having time to recover from one workout, I was already back in the gym. And since I didn’t even have time to get rid of even the direct muscle fatigue caused by training, my body didn’t even come close to building up even a little extra muscle mass. It is not surprising that illnesses and injuries crippled me. How else could my body kick me out of the gym? How else could it get rid of constant exhaustion? My body was not up to building muscle mass and strength, it just wanted to survive. Too many amateurs bring themselves to chronic fatigue with too intense workouts. Although, much more often amateurs come to this state due to too frequent and long workouts, even if not very intense. Long workouts and popular split-system training schemes can well bring even a genetically gifted athlete to exhaustion. What can we say about the growth of muscle volume and their strength in ordinary amateurs ?!

If you experience chronic fatigue, your body will fundamentally not be able to realize its ability to build muscle. That's why there are so many failed bodybuilders in the gyms.

Never go to the gym until you feel completely rested and recovered from your previous workout. Never aggravate your fatigue with new loads. Give yourself a break!

How many days you need for this is up to you. If you are twenty years old, if you are very energetic, sleep well and lead a stress-free life, then you will probably be fully recovered from every intense workout (even with squats and deadlifts) as early as the third or fourth day. On the other hand, if you're in your thirties, if you have small kids who keep you awake at night, two jobs and a stressful life, don't expect to be able to recover on the third or fourth day after a grueling workout. Then it is better to perform each of the exercises at intervals of six to seven days, and take longer breaks between workouts with deadlifts. You can also do this: divide the set of six exercises in half and do each half in turn with a reasonable frequency.

If you have big problems with recovery and rest and nervous tension does not let you go, forget about intense workouts. Take care to keep the progress you've already made until things get back to normal and you get a chance to train properly.

Exceptional genetics and the use of steroids greatly increase the body's ability to endure overload and accelerate muscle growth. There are already other laws in place. Of course, professionals need to recover between workouts, but they can go to the gym more often and do more exercises there than we can. All this is not written to disappoint you, but to make you listen to the advice of people like you. It makes no sense to imitate those who have special genetic advantages and auxiliary pharmacological agents.

What do you need for rest?

Many amateurs begin to increase muscle mass and strength by doing a single exercise only once a week on a regular basis, and deadlifting even less often. Don't be afraid to experiment with these workout regimens, and don't believe people who want to tell you that you need to go to the gym at least every four days or your muscles will atrophy. You don't have to stick to a rigid schedule. Rest between workouts as long as you need to feel good: seventy-two hours, ninety-six, one hundred and twenty, one hundred and forty-four, or even more. The main thing is progress, not adherence to scholastic schemes.

On initial stage cycle, when the load is just approaching your past record, you can train more often than in the stages with a full load. When choosing the frequency of training, take into account not only your general fatigue, but also the fatigue of individual muscle groups. If your back or legs still hurt, even if only slightly, wait another day or two before loading them up again or going to the gym at all. On the day before training, there should be no pain in any of the muscles. Muscle pain caused by basic exercises always accompanies muscle fatigue. Is it possible to imagine that your legs, buttocks and lower back hurt badly (say, from squats), and at the same time there was no obvious general fatigue?

If you are properly "engaged" in training, and the most difficult stage of the cycle is yet to come, you may not feel "local" fatigue at all - only general. But do not think that if nothing hurts you, then you have fully recovered and can go back to the gym. No, you should come to each training session only after both “local” and general muscle fatigue have passed. Otherwise, you will fall into the abyss, at the bottom of which disappointment and despair await you.

The speed of your progress is almost directly related to how much effective workouts you manage to spend, say, a month or a year. If you can train each part of your body every other day and still recover normally, you will quickly "accumulate" the amount of training needed to develop impressive muscles. If you manage to load each muscle group only once every five to seven days (for deadlifts, the frequency may be even less), then the required number of workouts will “accumulate” with you very soon. But you will not accelerate growth if you come to the gym more often under-recovered.

So, try to maintain the correct pauses between workouts. Never go to the gym until you feel refreshed and fully rested. If there is any doubt about the recovery, it is better to wait another day or two.

Some successful growing amateurs exercise surprisingly infrequently. Some people do deadlifts two to three weeks apart. And it’s not laziness that’s to blame here at all - it’s just that these bodybuilders have seen from their own experience that they cannot achieve success with a higher frequency of training. You don’t have to follow their example at all, but keep in mind that such cases happen, which means that the frequency of training can be fundamentally changed over a very wide range.

Dream

Even if it seems to you that your well-being does not suffer from the fact that you often lack sleep for an hour or two, sooner or later this will affect your work in the gym. And if the "lack of sleep" accumulates, you can forget about the progress in bodybuilding. If you wake up in the morning on your own, without an alarm clock and without outside help, week after week and month after month, then your progress will become much more noticeable. To progress in the gym, it is very important that you feel completely rested every day. Then you will be able to do more full load workouts, your cycles will be longer and you will not waste energy and strength. To create the right conditions for muscle growth It's better to oversleep than undersleep. Try to go to bed early, and at about the same time, to set your internal clock. Get up not too early. If you wake up, it's bad. Stick to a routine that allows you to wake up on your own.

It is very easy to achieve this. Do not sit up in the evenings in front of the TV, and you will always get up on your own. I know very well what hard work is and life with small children who constantly interfere with sleep. There are times when normal sleep cannot be established. Well, be patient, and when the conditions become more decent, start getting enough sleep. And this will immediately affect your success in bodybuilding.

If you sleep long and soundly, it will be much easier for you to realize your genetic potential. This is especially important for the second half of the cycle. When the load reaches its maximum, do everything to carve out an extra hour or two for sleep.

Abbreviated Workouts

Abbreviated workouts include only basic exercises - any additional and "finishing" work is excluded. The number of basic exercises can be reduced to four, three or even two; V last resort You can only do one exercise. Take this guideline seriously. For some fans, this is the only way to success.

Even for those who are able to get ahead with more complex sets of exercises, abbreviated programs can be more effective. You go slower, you will be farther - this rule is especially true for the average amateur and not using steroids. Don't believe? Check it out yourself! Just do not forget about perseverance and patience.

Reduced programs have two big advantages. Firstly, since the workouts themselves are short, you can perform all the exercises with the utmost intensity. Secondly, it will be easier for your body to recover between workouts. This means that the likelihood of overwork will be much lower. You will recover faster than usual, feel better on non-training days, and start training with more enthusiasm. This means you will grow faster. Here it is, the secret of success! Another advantage of reduced programs is that you will spend less time in the gym. For those who lead a very busy life, this is of great importance.

Reduced training is generally the only way to success for those amateurs whose constitution is almost completely "not suitable" for bodybuilding. However, using shortened programs (especially at the first stage of training) is very useful for those who are not deprived of nature. Even for them, reduced training provides considerable advantages in comparison with traditional methods.

We asked ourselves: what is the ideal rest interval between sets for muscle growth? Moreover, this topic was recently published by the famous fitness scientist Brad Schoenefeld. The translator translates the expert's material in the first person.

In strength training manuals, it is believed that for maximum growth strength needed long rest intervals (3 minutes) between sets, and for maximizing muscle growth between sets it is recommended to rest about 1 minute.

This idea is based on the fact that higher metabolic stress associated with limited rest time between sets stimulates muscle growth to a greater extent. Some experts in particular focus on the post-workout spike in anabolic hormones as the main driver of the muscle growth process.

However, before today there were no studies with experienced trainees to support the generally accepted recommendation to rest between sets of 3 minutes for strength gains and 1 minute for hypertrophy.

In 2014, with my colleague Menno Hanselmans, we presented a review that was published in the journal Sport Medicine. After carefully reviewing the literature, we found that there is little evidence to suggest that shorter rest intervals between sets have a positive effect on hypertrophy.

As I said in my blog, based on the data available today, you can choose your own rest intervals without sacrificing muscle growth, if in the next approach they are able to reproduce the necessary efforts.

Study of intervals for muscle volume and strength growth

Group of 21 young man was randomly divided into 2 subgroups: one rested between sets for 1 minute, and the second - 3 minutes.

All other components of the training program remained unchanged. The subjects trained in a standard bodybuilding-oriented style, performing 7 exercises and working out all the major muscle groups of the upper and lower parts of the body.

In each exercise, 3 sets of 8-12 repetitions were performed, while the training itself took place 3 times a week for 8 weeks.

We tested participants before and immediately after the study. Bench press on a horizontal bench and squats were used as test exercises to determine the growth of strength indicators (the indicators were determined based on the growth of 1RM). With the help of two-dimensional ultrasound (ultrasound), specific indicators of hypertrophy of the elbow flexors, triceps brachii and quadriceps femoris were evaluated.

Experiment results

When analyzing changes based on the 1RM test, the group that rested longer in both the bench press and the squat had significantly greater increases in maximum strength.

However, somewhat unexpectedly: in the same group, muscle volume also increased more.

Although we cannot be sure what is causing these results. It can be assumed that they are associated with a decrease in the total training load in the second group (who rested less) due to a decrease in the weight that the subjects could lift after a short rest compared to a long rest.

There is a well-established dose-response relationship between training load and hypertrophy, in which high volume correlates with greater muscle growth. Very short rest intervals between sets can negatively affect hypertrophy by reducing the amount of weight you can use in subsequent sets.

This means that if there is a synergistic effect in the increase in metabolic stress, it is overshadowed by a decrease in the total volume of workload.

conclusions

It seems clear that a 1-minute rest interval between sets has a negative effect on muscle growth. However, if 1 minute rest between sets is too little, then how long should you rest between sets if your goal is maximum muscle growth? Well, based on our previous experiment with experienced athletes, 2 minutes of rest between sets is likely to be enough for recovery without negatively impacting muscle growth.

It's worth noting that the results of the current study need to be understood in the right context, as we only examined the effect of 2 variations (1 min vs. 3 min) of rest on muscle adaptations. However, this information should not be taken as either black or white - there is no reason why you cannot combine different rest intervals to potentially maximize hypertrophy.

A viable strategy is to rest longer during multi-joint exercises on large groups muscles - squats, presses and pulls. These exercises cause very high metabolic stress, especially when performed in a moderate (8-15) rep range. Thus, to fully restore energy before the next set, longer periods of rest are needed. This will allow you to maintain training volume throughout your workout..

On the other hand, single-joint exercises are less metabolically exhausting, and so you can recover faster from set to set. For this reason, exercises such as triceps extensions or leg extensions can most likely be performed with shorter rest intervals between sets.

In this scenario, it is best to leave exercises with a short rest interval at the end of the workout to make sure that they do not interfere with recovery and do not affect physical performance during multi-joint exercises.

The final word: this topic is still being studied, and each study is just a piece of the puzzle. As more experiments are being done, I hope we will soon have a better idea of ​​how to adjust the training program in such a way as to achieve the greatest possible muscle growth. Follow the news.

Zozhnik decided to figure out how much time without training will really pass before we start to lose shape.

Each of us skips workouts for various reasons. But we know very well that often even an unplanned absenteeism of one workout, like a snowball, develops into absenteeism of 3, 5 and 10 workouts. At the same time, many people fear that if they miss one workout, they will immediately lose their sports form.

In the process of regular training (especially intense) our body is in a stressful state. That is why from time to time it is necessary to take a short break in training in order to allow our central nervous system, muscles, ligaments, tendons and bones to recover. But it is important not to overdo it with the length of the rest, because otherwise the “use it or lose it” rule will come into play, which implies the loss of specific abilities of our body (muscle volume, endurance, strength) with the cessation of training.

Science says that there are 2 major factors that affect the rate of loss of form: the length of the break and the level of training at the time of its beginning.

How Quickly Experienced Athletes Lose Shape

It is much easier to regain the lost level of fitness if you have been training regularly for a long time. Simply put, if you have been training systematically 3-4 times a week for more than a year, your muscle memory and endurance will remain better than beginners.

It's also important to emphasize that fitness loss can worsen at different rates depending on whether you're doing strength training or cardio.

Loss of strength

Most experienced athletes begin to lose strength after 2-3 weeks of cessation of training, but this also depends on the conditions in which the body is located during the break. If you are sick and your body is under stress, you will start to lose strength after 2-3 weeks. If you are healthy and move enough, a significant loss of strength indicators will begin to be felt only after the 4th week.

In 2001, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) journal MedicineinScienceandExercise published a review of several studies that examined the effect of training breaks on the strength performance of runners, rowers, and strength athletes. All groups of trainees showed a minimal decrease in strength even after the onset of the 4th week without training.

However, the following feature was noticed: while the overall strength indicators practically did not decrease, the specific muscle fibers of the athletes began to noticeably lose in strength. In endurance athletes, most of the "slow" muscle fibers (just responsible for a large number of repetitions) has significantly lost in strength. In power workers, the same changes were observed in type II fibers (responsible for strength).

Loss of aerobic capacity

According to sports medicine expert Elizabeth Quinn, the loss of aerobic capacity in experienced athletes happens quite quickly. The specialist mentions a study in which experienced athletes completely stopped exercising for 3 months after a year of training. As a result, scientists found that in 3 months the endurance performance of athletes decreased by as much as 50%.

Also in 1985, scientists from Denmark conducted an experiment involving 9 experienced athletes training in an aerobic style. Before the start of the experiment, the participants allocated endurance training from 6 to 10 hours per week. During the trial period, their workouts were reduced to one high-intensity 35-minute session per week. After 4 weeks, endurance performance in athletes decreased by 21%.

But don’t get discouraged, as strength and conditioning expert Molly Galbraith says, although endurance performance drops more compared to strength, experienced athletes quickly return to their previous level.

How quickly beginners lose shape

If you have only recently entered the world of fitness and for some reason are forced to take a break from training, you should not stretch this period for a long time. The main key to achieving any fitness goals is the consistency and regularity of training, and here it is very important not to lose the gained momentum too soon.

Loss of strength

Strength indicators of beginners are better preserved and recover faster after a break in training compared to athletes. And this is logical: the further a person has gone from the usual level in his sports development, the more difficult it is for him to keep himself at this high level, respectively, and the loss in fitness is higher for any reason. And vice versa - beginners do not have much to lose compared to athletes. And science confirms this.

Let's turn to a curious study, which was conducted in 2011 by Japanese scientists. During their experiment, 15 beginners were divided into 2 groups. Both groups performed bench presses on a horizontal bench with high level intensity. At the same time, the first group trained for 15 weeks in a row, and the second after 6 weeks of training took a 3-week break and resumed training for the next 5 weeks. After 15 weeks, the scientists compared the results and found that in the end, both groups of subjects had identical strength indicators.

Loss of aerobic performance

However, with aerobic performance, everything is exactly the opposite. There is quite a bit of research on this topic, but we found the following. According to the same Elizabeth Quinn, beginners lose their aerobic performance much faster than experienced athletes. The specialist refers to an experiment in which beginners leading a sedentary lifestyle trained on exercise bikes for 2 months.

After 8 weeks, the subjects showed significant improvements in performance. of cardio-vascular system, their aerobic performance also increased significantly. But as soon as the subjects took a 2-month pause, the scientists found a loss of all improvements. As a result, the subjects fully returned to the level of aerobic abilities that they had before the start of training.

How to slow down fitness loss

Whether you've taken a scheduled break from your workouts or you've had a health issue, there are ways you can help slow down the loss of your fitness.

  1. Do light cardio

If your physical condition allows, do a few easy runs per week. So you can slow down the loss of your aerobic performance.

  1. Connect strength training

There can be many reasons for stopping strength training, including injury. However, if the damage is localized, for example, in the ankle or wrist, it is not at all necessary to use your injury as an excuse. For example, nothing prevents you from doing crunches with an injured wrist or swimming a short distance freestyle with a minor finger injury.

If you have a really serious injury or you have a cold and lie in bed with high temperature, in this case, you must completely refrain from any training.

  1. Eat Right

Proper nutrition during the training pause will help slow down the loss of muscle mass and avoid swimming with a layer of fat. Eat enough protein, choose healthy sources of carbohydrates and fats. Also, during the rest period from training, it is important to observe the principle rational nutrition, at which the amount of energy received must be equal to its amount expended.

CONCLUSION

In fact sports uniform lost not so quickly, but if you an experienced athlete You don't have much to worry about at all. In general, the more experienced the athlete, the easier it is for him to regain his level of strength thanks to muscle memory, and the slower his aerobic abilities are lost, which he can relatively quickly restore.

At newcomers everything is a little different. While they don't need to worry about a temporary loss of strength as they quickly return after resuming training, things are different with aerobic performance. But that's why they are beginners, that their aerobic abilities are not so well developed as to be afraid to lose them.

Sources:

o How long does it actually take to get out of shape, greatlist.com.

o How fast do I lose fitness if I stop exercising, about.com.

o Madsen K., Pedersen P.K., Effects of detraining on endurance capacity and metabolic changes during extended exhaustive exercise, Department of Physical Education, Odense University.

o Ogasawara R., Yasuda T., Effects of periodic and continued resistance training on muscle CSA and strength in previously untrained men, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo.

o Mujika I., Padilla S., Cardiorespiratory and metabolic characteristics of detraining in humans, Departamento de Investigación y Desarrollo, Athletic Club de Bilbao, Spain.

Sports activities not only allow you to keep your muscles in good shape, they improve appearance, but also help to keep the brain healthy until old age, without losing cognitive abilities.

Training makes the brain work at optimal power, promotes the regeneration of its cells, protects them from damage, and strengthens neural connections.

The result that provides exercise stress, is manifested through neurotrophin (BDNF), which activates stem cells, which contributes to the emergence of new neurons. The protective effect is also visible due to other positive changes:

  • reduces the risk of heart disease;
  • increases the survival of neurons;
  • neuroprotective compounds are produced that prevent the development of diseases such as dementia.

The effect of a 20-minute workout on the body

Sports loads contribute to the production of a number of neurotransmitters - endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, glutamate. Their role in mood control and emotional state known. Therefore, exercise is an indispensable component of a strategy aimed at treating and preventing depression.

Neurotrophic factor and endorphins, the production of which is triggered by movement, make us feel good, improve cognitive functions strengthen memory.

So that the feeling of happiness does not leave, the mood is positive, and the efficiency has increased, It is enough to give sports some 20 minutes a day. Brain activity even after a short walk at a calm pace increases dramatically. The main thing is that the load is not interrupted. Daily classes (even if short) are much more effective than long ones, but with long breaks.

At the same time, all these health benefits quickly disappear if you start to ignore the exercises. So how long does it take for the body to lose all the bonuses received and lose the skills that sport has endowed?

2 week break

Muscles will be the first to respond to the cessation of exercise - their tone will decrease significantly in the first week of ignoring exercise.

The brain will also react sensitively to the lack of movement - the blood flow in the hippocampus slows down already after 10 days without sports, the work of the departments responsible for memories and emotions will worsen.

By the end of the second week, endurance will noticeably decrease. This indicator is affected by the value of VO2 max - it can be used to determine how much oxygen (maximum) the body can use within a minute, provided that training is carried out with an extremely high load.

The result that a person who has not trained for half a month will show will be 10% worse than usual. In a month, the indicator will decrease by another 15%, in two - by 20%.

The absence of sports loads also affects the digestibility of glucose, pressure indicators.

4-8 weeks without exercise

Changes physical form already visible to the naked eye. Even if the diet is followed, the muscles (primarily biceps and triceps) will lose their tone, the contours of the body will become blurry.

If the nutrition during training was quite high-calorie, and the diet did not change when the sport was abandoned, the set excess weight inevitable.

Endurance continues to decline. At the same time, every day it will be more difficult to get back in shape, even if you resume classes (especially in old age).

How much time does the body need to rest between classes

Do I need to rest between workouts? Undoubtedly yes. Exercising too often without allowing the muscles, tissues and joints to recover is also extreme. Influences the length of the recovery period and the degree of preparation, and age, and the nature of the loads.

Generally, the more intense the workout, the more time you need to rest. Beginners are not recommended to expose the body to intensive interval training more than three times a week. With an increase in strength and endurance, the number and intensity of classes can be increased, gradually reaching its maximum.

What kind of break should be between workouts, at first, the coach will help determine. In the future, the body itself will tell you how long the pauses should be.

At the same time, "weekends" should not pass passively. Light aerobic exercise (walking, jogging), stretching exercises, and flexibility are not forbidden. This will make it possible to comprehensively develop the body, and not some specific muscle group.

When is skipping training justified?

Sometimes a break in sports is forced. If laziness and procrastination do not interfere in the process, good reasons to refuse training can be:

Disease

Cough, chest pain, muscle pain, overwhelming fatigue, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps are symptoms that require medical attention and serve as a good reason to miss a workout.

If the temperature is slightly elevated (a degree and a half above normal), no severe fatigue, light load is not prohibited, on the contrary, exercises will help to sweat and remove viruses and toxins from the body.

Injury

Regular exercises will help to avoid many injuries, develop dexterity, concentration. But it happens that due to inexperience, incorrect calculation of the allowable load, equipment malfunction (the human factor is not excluded) you can get injured.

In this case, loads are not prohibited if they do not affect the damaged area. For example, in case of a shoulder injury (if a part of the body is securely fixed), you can work out lower part body and vice versa. The main thing is not to aggravate the condition of the injured area.

Avoid activities that cause pain. It is best to coordinate the training plan with a physiotherapist, the specialist will select not only non-hazardous, but also types of exercises that accelerate recovery.

severe fatigue

For example, after a sleepless night, loading the body with jogging or high-intensity training is not only undesirable, but also dangerous to health.

You can not abandon the lesson plan, but you need to train at a calm pace so that the pulse does not exceed 120-130 beats.

If the situation with lack of sleep repeats, it is necessary to solve this problem first of all, otherwise the fatigue will become chronic, which will make it impossible to fully engage.

Overtraining

Chasing for a day or two after a workout, krepatura is normal. Muscle pain is caused by microscopic tears in the muscle fibers. The less prepared the body, the stronger the pain. This is not a reason to cancel training, over time the body will respond more calmly to the load, and the pain will decrease.

Another thing is when a person, being a fairly experienced athlete, nevertheless subjected his body to too much stress. At the same time, severe pain pursues, making it impossible to continue classes.

It is necessary to exclude the possibility of injury, possibly undergo physiotherapy. Help relieve pain and special means(ointments, gels).

Participation in a marathon

Give up on the day of the competition from additional load (especially intense). It will be enough to warm up and exercise to help get in shape before the start.

Conclusion

If skipping workouts has become the norm, analyze what is happening to get to the bottom of the true reason. It's commonplace laziness, disorganization or, indeed, poor health?

Exercising makes you feel better physically, mentally and emotionally. They relieve stress and reduce the risk of chronic ailments. Such an effect is worth the time and labor costs, strong-willed efforts that are required to maintain a sports regimen.

Find the conditions that suit you: sport, individual or group lessons, time, take care of a comfortable and nice shape- do everything so that sports activities bring pleasure, and you will not even have the slightest desire to miss a workout.

Experienced athletes say that the most important parameter for successful training is their regularity. Everything is quite obvious - train constantly and the result will come into your hands. But here, in fact, the most interesting begins: some guys, in principle, cannot comply with the strict requirements of the sports schedule for months and years, and if one of them remains in bodybuilding, then his training has a noticeably “torn” character in time; others, on the contrary, follow famous recommendation so tight and committed that even after several years they can boast of not even missing a workout, despite a multi-day training split.

One thing unites both the first and second ones - a lack of understanding that for the best, and fastest, result, it is more important not to follow inner convictions, often of a spontaneous nature, - to skip or not skip workouts, to do it according to mood or at the behest of a whim - but on the contrary, to find " golden mean”, which will allow you to train for a long time and not overload your own psycho-emotional sphere unnecessarily. It is remarkable that the search for this very “middle” does not lie in the plane of personal psychology, but rather in the field of physiology.

The point is that gaps in training, or rather, planned breaks and vacations, should first of all serve common purpose training - timely and full recovery. And in this matter, nothing can be superfluous.

Loading skeletal muscles, ligaments, tendons and even the skeleton during training, the athlete is simply obliged to give his own body time for life-giving and regeneration that brings results. As tools for this work, nutrition and time for recovery are at his disposal, both of which are within his full competence. Moreover, only he, even sometimes resorting to outside consultations, can say with absolute certainty whether the restoration has passed all its stages. This is necessary only for one purpose, so that the loads in the gym not only load the body, but competently alternate with the process of its recovery, which is no less significant for the growth of muscle mass and strength indicators than the training itself. By this significant reason a training split should always be tailored to the individual's personal recovery needs. Otherwise, he will not see success in bodybuilding.

But also this human body will be few. Making attacks on the resources of their own body for many months, bodybuilders thereby load not only the musculoskeletal system. In the high intensity mode, the whole being of the body works: the digestive and excretory organs, the cardiovascular and respiratory system, and what is more important for an athlete, who is interested in results no less than in his health, is a complex system of hormonal regulation of the body. And when it comes to recovery, it is simply impossible to forget about the restoration of vital organs and the work of the endocrine glands and is fraught with the failure of the body, the first sure signs which always serves as a drop in the effectiveness of training, a decline in mood and strength, in a word, all signs of overtraining.

In order to enable this important point full recovery of the body from hard and long workouts, just as it is done when compiling a weekly split, it is necessary to add special periods of complete rest from loads, any: anaerobic and aerobic, to the program. Thus, giving the body time to recover to its previous level of performance, as well as further strengthening its strength reserves for new, yet upcoming loads. You don’t need much for this - it’s enough to interrupt every three to four months for a restorative vacation, preferably, thus completing the next training cycle.