Best Way To Gain Muscle - How To Prevent Over Training

Overtraining is never good. Not only will it lessen the effectivity of your weight training, it can also have negative effects on your body, such as decreased levels of antibodies and lymphocytes, excessive accumulation of lactic acid, and damaged tendons and connective tissues, just to name a few.

To avoid overtraining you need 3 things--the capability to determine the correct volume and intensity, the right foods, and the right amount of rest and recovery.

Correct Training Volume and Intensity
Determining how much weight to lift and how many repetitions and sets to perform can be difficult at first, especially if you are just starting out. But the best guide to use here is your own judgment. To begin with, you shouldn't be lifting more than what you're body can really handle. Not only will you be having a hard time performing the workout properly, but you will also be subjecting yourself to a higher risk of suffering injuries.

Additionally, you should also keep track of how fast you body recovers after each workout. This is very important. You should not perform high intensity workouts while your muscles are still recovering. We'll talk more about this later.

Eating Right

Your diet plays a very big role in your muscle building program--it helps regulate hormone levels, it provides you energy, and it provides the raw building blocks that you body needs to repair and build new tissue.

The most important thing to have in your diet is protein, and lots of it. Protein is what enables your body to build and repair muscles. If you do not have enough protein in your body you can not build muscle mass. In addition to protein, your body also needs a consistent supply of carbohydrates. This is what gives your body the energy to function.

But to limit the chance of overtraining, you should follow these tips:

Never skip breakfast and never allow yourself to go hungry. Allowing yourself to go hungry will make your body feed on your own muscles for energy, thus resulting to muscle loss.
Have a heavy carbohydrate-rich meal within an hour after your workout. This will ensure that your body will have an ample nutritional supply to feed, repair, and build your muscles. Consuming carbohydrate immediately after exercise also inhibits the breakdown of muscle tissue and encourages the building of new protein.
Consider taking proven supplements (e.g., creatine) and antioxidants to increase performance and fight free radicals.
Eat every 2-3 hours to ensure that your body remains in an anabolic state. This is the state where tissues are being built up. And taking in a constant nutritional supply will keep your body in this state, enabling your muscles to recover faster.

Rest and Recovery

In case you don't know, muscles grow only when they are given the chance to recover from the stress they were subjected to during a workout. So it is very important that you get an ample amount of rest after a workout. If you don't get enough rest, your muscles will not have enough time to recover, thus they will not be able to grow.

By: jcastor

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