Rest, Sleep, and Other Important Muscle Recovery FactorsI'm not going to begin to tell you how much rest and sleep you need for maximum muscle gains; only you can know that. But here are some signs that you're NOT getting enough! Over-training is the term used when a weight trainer stops making gains and might even lose some gains. It occurs when the muscles either don't have enough time to recover, or when the muscles are subjected to too much stress. Both of these events can cause over-training. Subject your body to too much High Intensity Training (HIT) and you're likely to see negative returns for your bodybuilding investment. Or, don't leave enough time in between sessions for your muscles to not only recover but to grow, and you'll see prior gains wiped out. In fact, you might be closer to an injury than you might think. Classical Signs of Over-training
If you find you have several of these symptoms, by all means change up your work-out routine. Go lighter than normal. Instead of 4 set per body part, go with 2 or 3. Abbreviate your muscle-building schedule. Take a day off! As a general rule, most people need between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night. This means 7 to 9 hours in a row and going to bed at the same time each night. The body can adapt to less sleep easier than it can to a widely-varying schedule, so make sure you "retire" each night to bed at roughly the same time. Especially important is rising at the same time each morning.
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