Thursday, December 18, 2008

Natural Bodybuilding Advice, No Sleep, No Gain

By Ricardo d Argence

It's easy to go to the gym a few times a week and then assume you will just sit back and watch your muscles grow. But there are many other factors involved besides just physically working out and targeting your muscles through weight training.

Dont underestimate the effect that sleep has on your workout. You need to rest properly, and that's not just between workouts. Altering your sleep schedule to ensure getting a steady and sound night's sleep each night can produce drastic transformations in the outcomes you observe with bodybuilding.

There are actually several reasons why sleep is so important to be successful at bodybuilding. For starters, your body recovers and rebuilds muscle while you are asleep. This is the crucial time when other parts of your body are shut down and not consuming energy or internal resources that your body uses to repair damages from bodybuilding.

You must rest or your body won't be able to heal and add new muscle. You will be adversely impacting your gains by not providing enough time for your muscles to heal, recover, and continue to grow in the proper manner.

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.

That means that sleeping for 2 hours on friday night and then sleeping for 12 hours on saturday night doesn't amount to the same benefits as sleeping 7 hours both nights in a row of no matter what you want to maintain a consistent sleep schedule. And that's what you should shoot for, at least 7 hours a night. You must sleep if you want to succed at bodybuilding under any circumstance. - 16463

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