Being Mindful Of More Than Just Muscular Fatigue

For many people, when designing their workout program, whether designed for fat loss or muscle building, one of the primary things they focus on is being sure to give each muscle group 48 hours of rest.

This essentially means that if you do a chest workout on Monday, the soonest you should again work the chest muscles will be on Wednesday. Working them on the Tuesday would likely over load the muscle too much, without giving it enough of a chance to recover.

Most people have a good graps on this.

But, what many people fail to incorporate into their program is enough rest between training sessions period.

They will do a chest, shoulders, and arms workout on Monday, a legs workout on Tuesday, then do a Back workout on Wednesday, letting themselves rest on Thursday before repeating the cycle once again.

This seems like it should be okay - all the muscle groups are still getting 48 hours of rest, so they are following the right principle.

But, this isn't quite the case.

The problem is that the individual muscles are getting a good break, this much is true, but the CNS is not.

The CNS is what is going to really drive the system in the first place, and when it's fatigued, you won't be able to lift as much as you normally would regardless of how long any given muscle has had to rest.

So, be sure you also take into account total days off.

Ideally you won't want to go more than two days in a row lifting, otherwise you could start seeing CNS fatigue kicking in.

Make sure you don't overlook this critical component in your workout program planning.

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