Rest Your Muscles!

When you love to train and train hard it's most important to take your rest days between those hard core workouts. No matter how much your brain may trick you in to thinking you must go all day 6-7 days a week. It's too much and leads to Over-Training. I've been there a few times while preparing for competition and once was band from the gym for a whole week because I was over-training. It was torture, but I came back muscles full, big and ready to win my competition. I was shocked how strong I was and how my muscles were popping from the weeks rest. I kept my eating clean and healthy, but let my body rest a full week. My brother stressed this to me all the time especially if he saw me looking flat, lost weight or just run down. He knew I had trouble stopping and him reminding me always kept me in check.

To explain in other terms: Think of a "Sprinter" VS "Marathon Runner" If you look sprinters have large, full, powerful leg muscles verse a marathon runner who still has strong legs muscles, but are very lean, thin and worked a lot for long lengths of time and lots of miles. This why I keep my running too 3-5 miles a run and I run as fast as I can and run hills and sprints. Don't get me wrong marathon runners are awesome in their own right, but they aren't trying to build muscle to step on a stage to compete or may not want or like the muscular look. Everyone's different and even marathon runners need rest and repair days to be on top of their game! 

Truly love your muscles? Let then rest between hard core training days in a row!