Did you know?
You can gain muscle strength and endurance even if you go to the gym 3 times a week, for just 30 minutes each session.
How can you do that?
Every time we lift weights, what we’re actually doing is creating micro-tears damaging the muscle fibers. Accompanied with balanced diet and rest, the muscles repairs itself and adapts to handle the tension that is increased and surpassed to what it has experienced before.
Overtraining muscles can lead to fatigue and muscle injuries. That’s why if you’re spending hours in the gym working out 5-7 times a week, you’re not giving your body enough time to recover.
However, if you lack in exercise your muscles won’t have enough damage for them to grow. With proper training and right amount of workout you can gain more strength as well as repair your muscles more. Basic ingredient to build muscle and recover is sleep, while we sleep our body produces muscle-building hormones which contributes to muscle growth and improving performance.
Progressive overload is most important in getting positive results from your workouts. Progressive overload principle states that you must consistently increase weight, stress, and intensity of your workout, in order for your muscle to grow, strength gained, and endurance to increase.
Your goal will become stronger every week. It could be by increasing the reps or increase the weight. Keeping a record of your training is a must. You should recall the workouts you’ve done from the previous week and improve your performance by continual increase of your workload during your training session to stimulate muscle growth and strength gain.
For example your workout include squats — 3 sets of 10-12 reps. In day 1 you do 3 sets of 10 reps, on your 2nd day you should now do 3 sets of 11 reps, and on your 3rd day you should do 3 sets of 12 reps. If you reached 12 reps, you must now increase the weight and go back to 10 reps. The goal is you should always increase the intensity and tension. And no two workouts should be the same.
To further understand the given example please refer to figure below.
Work hard, stay consistent, and get the best results every time you go to the gym.
