The name of the game when it comes to fitness is gain. Everybody wants to get better. People love to see improvements, to meet their goals, to break through plateaus, to exceed their own expectations. This is especially true when it comes to weight lifting or athletic training, which is why one of the greatest fears is doing something wrong and actually losing muscle mass or strength. How long can you take off from training before you begin to lose gains? What is the risk of over training? How much time do you need to rest and recover in order to grow and not simply wear out your muscle? This article will briefly examine the biology of what causes your muscles to break down, and then give an overview of what can cause that to happen.
Under ideal conditions, several factors are needed to cause muscle growth. You need to overload your muscles so as to cause micro-tears and stimulate muscle growth. You then need to rest so as to allow your body to repair itself, and correct nutrition from which to derive the resources needed to create new muscle fiber. Muscle loss occurs when any of these factors are insufficiently represented in the equation.
If you overload your body through heavy weight training, say hitting the same muscle groups intensely four times a week, you will not be giving your muscles enough time to repair themselves before breaking them down once more. The end result is extreme fatigue, no growth, and perhaps even slight muscle loss. Over training results in the plateau effect, along with feelings of grumpiness, insomnia, loss of sexual desire, fatigue, loss of appetite, elevated heart rate, etc. If you are sleeping well and eating well, over training by itself will not normally cause excessive muscle loss. But it sure ain’t productive or pleasant either.
Second, insufficient sleep will result the same results as over training. Fatigue and loss of appetite are common, especially when coupled with weight training. The problem here is that you’re simply not allowing your body to rebuild itself, causing your muscles to remain broken down. You will still not experience rapid muscle loss, but rather will once again plateau and fee awful.
The real reason that muscle loss occurs is through insufficient nutrition. If you were to totally starve yourself, protein loss would be extreme as your body scavenged for glucose with which to keep your brain functioning. This would continue until your body switched over to ketones for fuel. Even so, during complete starvation there is always protein loss. Incorrect dieting or problematic eating habits due to ignorance can duplicate this effect. If there is insufficient nutrition within your body to handle the basic functioning requirements, your body will break down muscle for fuel. If you are on a no-carb diet, for example, your body will seek to create glucose from amino acids, which it will harvest from muscle unless high quantities of protein are ingested. That is why it’s essential to always eat enough when exerting yourself-not doing so is actually detrimental to your health.
Ok, so practically speaking most people experience a combination of these three factors when they notice muscle loss. Somebody could be working long hours, not getting enough sleep or having enough time to cook proper food, and forcing themselves to hit the gym so as to not lose previous gains. Over the course of the next month they notice themselves feeling weak, exhausted, and their muscle mass decreasing in size. The reasons why this is occurring is obvious.
Finally, I would like to draw a distinction between over training and losing muscle mass due to working out too hard. The first occurs when you don’t give your body enough time to recover over the course of a month or two. The second occurs when you are lifting very heavy weights too frequently, and not allowing them to recover through rest or nutrition. Excessive running, interval training, and even light body building will not result in actual muscle loss but rather in injury, fatigue and the plateau effect. Extreme weight training may cause muscle mass loss, but usually that is coupled with poor diet, not just by itself.
It’s crucial that you combine effective nutrition and appropriate amounts of sleep with a powerful exercise program like Tony Horton’s renowned or Shaun T’s infamous . It’s by pushing yourself to your max that you will ensure maximal muscle growth and fitness development.Article Source:
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