Real Muscle Growth

It's easy to focus mostly on your training, whether that be in the gym or during a home workout. But the most important part of any resistance training workout is your muscles’ recovery. Your muscles do not grow while you are lifting the weights; they grow during the recovery time in between workouts.

The goal of resistance training is to create tiny tears in your muscle fibers during your session. The recovery period begins immediately post workout and continues for up to 48 hours after your workout is complete. Thid is when your body works to repair these fibers. This repair is what allows you to continue burning calories well after your training session has ended.

The best way to promote recovery and encourage growth is through food. It is important to have some sort of meal within an hour after a resistance training session because your muscles are desperately working to repair themselves. Because your muscles are so desperate for nutrients your post-workout meal is also the “safest” meal of the day as well. This means if there's ever a time to cheat and treat yourself to a meal or snack that would normally be off-limits you should do it after a good resistance training session so that it is absorbed by your muscles as effeciently as possible. Protien is essential post workout but it is also good to get some carbohydrates here as well don't worry too much about getting simple or complex carbs post-workout as both will help... just know your limits.

In addition to food, it is also important that you give your muscles plenty of rest between workouts (this includes ensuring you get adequate sleep at night). Never train the same muscles more than once in any 48 hour period or you risk wasted effort. Basically it works like this... your train legs on Monday creating those tiny tears in your muscles. If you train your legs again Tuesday your legs are still in recovery mode and you'll end up tearing the muscle fibers again before they had a chance to recover from Monday's workout... so you've essentially wasted Monday's training by not letting your muscles recover from that session

In summary, it’s easy for us to put a lot of focus on your training when you’re at the gym but remember the real progress is made as soon as you complete the day’s workout. Get a good post workout meal and make sure you let your muscles rest so you can get the most out of your training.

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