Column 65 | A step back

ANSWER

Unfortunately, many athletes train according to the motto "more is better." This sentence may be true in life, but not in bodybuilding. Because what we want and what our body wants are two different things.

We want to be muscular, we want to get closer to a certain ideal. Our body, on the other hand, wants to survive. That is its only goal; it is indifferent to muscularity and harmonious development - an instinct that dates back to the Stone Age, when people lived as hunters and gatherers.

We bodybuilders have to learn to listen to our bodies and train as much as necessary. Otherwise, the body releases the highly catabolic hormone cortisol to protect itself. Cortisol is enemy number 1 for our muscle mass. That's why a workout should not last longer than 60 minutes, for example. Another situation in which our body releases cortisol is when we train too often. This leads to overtraining, which leads to muscle loss. Unfortunately, you usually only notice that you are overtrained when you are already in the middle of it.

To avoid overtraining, you should make sure not to train too often each week. Training every day from Monday to Saturday is definitely too much. Your body cannot recover sufficiently in between, and in my opinion the training-free Sunday is not enough for that. It affects not only the regeneration of the muscle being trained, but also that of the entire body's circulation...

That's why I recommend that you reduce your training to four days a week - for example, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. There is no training on Wednesdays and the weekend.

I am convinced that your body will thank you with new muscle growth. And the more progress you make, the more fun the workouts will be. Often you have to take one step back to be able to take two steps forward. I wish you the best of luck!