Saturday, September 19, 2009

You Will Not Gain Muscle if You Don't Sleep Enough

By Ricardo d Argence

Hitting the gym a couple of times every week, and watching your muscles grow is not hard. Physical exercise and targeted muscle weight training are only two of the factors involved and there are several more factors.

One of the most overlooked elements involved is that you need to rest properly, not just between workouts, but actually get a good night's rest at the end of the day. Changing around your sleep schedule so you get a solid and consistent night of rest, every night, can lead to big changes in the results you see from your bodybuilding program.

For many reasons sleep is one of the most important factors for successful bodybuilding. Though fatigued, your body's muscles recover during sleep. This lapse of time is important when some parts of your body aren't functioning, it's when your body recovers from damages.

Without enough of this quality rest, simply put, your body won't have enough time or availability to repair old muscle and build new muscle. You will be severely inhibiting your gains by not allowing your muscles to heal, mend and grow properly.

Adequate sleep is vital for keeping your mental focus sharp and your energy level high. A lack of mental focus can destroy your results while you're in the gym. You can be motivated, but if you don't have your work out planned out you will not have a successful workout.

Consequently you may feel neither energized or motivated when it's time for your weightlifting session. There's only so much your body can handle over the course of a day with a tiny amount of sleep. Due to many other commitments like work, school, and family, working out is usually last on the list and often missed.

Finally, the unseen reason why sleep is so important for great bodybuilding results is that sleeping restores and maintains a natural rhythm with your body's hormones. Sleeping releases some hormones into your bloodstream that are essential for proper metabolism and muscle gain. At the same time, sleep also inhibits other hormones that can lead to fat gain and other unseemly consequences.

Irregular sleeping habits are detrimental to your efforts to get in shape. Sleeping 3 hours on Monday, and 11 hours on Tuesday, is not the same thing as sleeping 7 hours on each night. That's what you should shoot for, at least 7 hours a night. Keep in mind, that no sleep will ruin your efforts at bodybuilding.

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