The past couple programs i have been receiving diminishing returns. Throughout my current program, based off the advice of others, i have decided to take a rest day in between every training session. As a uni student i stay up very late but due to my class schedule i still manage to get sleep ranging from 6-8 hours. Personally, i do not see why having 4 rest days per training week (this training week is obviously based on an 8-day cycle in this sense) would be problematic for gains. However, sometimes i question if im using this rest day for actual rest or laziness. What do you guys think?
Being lazy is rest from your body’s perspective. It doesn’t give a shit what you’re doing as long as you aren’t lifting, at least from my experience.
Resting every other day is a great way for me to ensure that I can go balls to the wall every time I train, although I generally go two on - one off. Much better than going 5 on - 1 off. Whatever works, keep doing that.
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How much rest is too much rest?
Technically anymore than you need to recover from the workload you’ve done short term e.g. workout to workout and long term week to week as fatigue accumulates.
Would rather rest more and deload before I really need it then accumulate excessive fatigue, under recover workout to workout and ultimately/overall progress slower or stall out.
Gains are made by SRA stimulus recovery adaption. Recovery/rest is as important as the stimulus to making gains. Doing more will give you more gains if you can recover from it. Replacing rest with work is risking your gains.
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That’s kinds how it works but what do you call diminishing?
I don’t know if anybody else feels the same way, but I think a week long deload for beginners and intermediate lifters are useless and may hamper progress in long run
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Muscles can take 48 hours to recover from training. DOMS can take longer if you push it. If you feel lazy on off days go for a walk and work with light bands and bodyweight squats to get blood back into the muscles.
Don’t sweat it though. Get your cals, macros, sleep and stress in line consistently. Pick a program that fits your goals written by a good coach and follow it.
The more advanced you get, the slower progress will be. You don’t necessarily need more rest days, although there is nothing wrong with training 3x/week either. Overall, you need to be able to recover from your training so if you are always feeling burnt out then there is a problem. And on the other hand, if you don’t feel fatigued then it’s possible that you could benefit from increasing volume. So the question is, do you feel fatigued? Do you often struggle to match performance from the previous week? Do you ever deload? How often?
Definitely for beginners there is no point, as for intermediates it would depend on what you consider intermediate but there are ways of managing fatigue without a deload week. The simplest way would be to reduce volume on days that performance is down, start pushing it again when you feel good.
Sounds like a deload to me lel. Deload by feel.
Unless you are doing high volume/low intensity training, the limiting factor for recovery will usually be fatigue (aka CNS fatigue), basically you just feel tired and can’t push as hard as usual. You don’t need 48 hours to recover before you can train the same muscles again, plenty of lifters train the same muscle groups in every workout, 4+ times a week.
Who are you, Abadjiev’s grandson? I need a meme that says “You are weightlifter. Your knees will hurt. Now go and squat!”
Yeah, you could call that a “reactive deload”. Most lifters who say they never deload do something of that sort (Dan Green for example), or just never do much volume and/or train infrequently to start with.
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recovery is everything.
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Calm down mane… maybe recovery is essential?
Recovery is still…EVERYTHING! Now I’m excited!!!
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