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You Should NEVER Skip A Workout... Or Should You?
Face it.. if you want to be successful at anything, discipline and consistency are mandatory.
You've got to be willing to work hard week in and week out, and put forth the effort even on those days when you'd rather stay at home, lie on the couch and relax.
The saying goes: "80% of success is showing up", and for the most part I'd say that's true.
Building muscle is basically no different.
You've got to stay tight to your workout schedule and get yourself into the gym even when it's the last thing on your mind. If you want to gain muscle size and strength as quickly as possible, you should never, ever miss a workout..
Or should you?
Well actually here's the thing..
Yes, consistency is important. Yes, you should be sticking to your workout schedule the vast majority of the time. Yes, simply bailing on the gym out of pure laziness is not acceptable.
However, to get a point across, I would like to bring up a quote from the late Mike Mentzer. He said: "Rituals have nothing to do with science".
What you need to keep in mind is that the human body is an extremely complex biological "machine", and that not every single workout and recovery period is identical.
In other words, just because your schedule states that you must train on days X, Y and Z doesn't necessarily mean that this will always be the optimal pattern every single week of the year.
If you wake up on a training day and your muscles still ache, you feel physically tired and your regular motivation to train just feels like it has been zapped away... don't you think your body just might be trying to tell you something?
Why would you force yourself to train in a situation where more recovery time is clearly needed, and when you know that your training performance will be less than optimal?
If your body, muscles and mind are clearly still reeling from the previous session, what sense does it make to force yourself to train despite this?
After all, we know that the recovery phase is the ultimate "muscle builder" (the actual process of adding new muscle tissue occurs out of the gym on resting days) and that intense weight training is extremely demanding on the body as a whole..
So why would you deliberately interfere with the very process that transforms your physique in the first place? Why not take an extra 24 hours off and re-enter the gym once you feel physically and mentally ready to do so?
What harm could there possibly be in that?
There is no threat of losing muscle size or strength, as these decreases require 2 or more weeks of inactivity to be set into motion. Yet, there is the perfectly likely reality of a positive gain in the form of proper recovery from the previous workout and improved performance on the following workout.
The underlying key is to listen to your body.
Rituals truly do not have anything to do with science, and if it feels obvious to you that additional rest is needed, take it.
Don't force your body into another battle with the weights if it clearly is not ready to do so. Don't let your ego get in the way; just because some muscle building guru told you to "never skip a workout" doesn't mean that it's always the best approach.
You do have to use this method with caution, though...
If you develop the mindset of only training when you "feel like it", then it's likely that you'll start delaying your workouts and convincing yourself that it's correct to do so when in fact it is not.
There are plenty of times when you won't feel like training purely for psychological reasons rather than concrete physical reasons, and that's not what I'm talking about here.
I'm simply talking about those days where you are able to sense that from a physical standpoint, taking an extra day of rest would be the better course of action.
Just remember... there is no long-term harm in taking an extra day of rest, but there IS the very real and immediate harm of training your body without being fully recovered first.
If in that much doubt, just take the day off!
Want more no B.S muscle-building strategies and articles just like this one?
Check out the rest of this FREE Bodybuilding Series or for all the details, go straight to the
Complete Bodybuilding Package.
In a bodybuilding world full of marketing hype and exaggerations, I cut straight through the lies and give you the no-nonsense truth about what it takes to gain muscle fast.
Go Natural, Say NO to Steroids
You've got to be willing to work hard week in and week out, and put forth the effort even on those days when you'd rather stay at home, lie on the couch and relax.
The saying goes: "80% of success is showing up", and for the most part I'd say that's true.
Building muscle is basically no different.
You've got to stay tight to your workout schedule and get yourself into the gym even when it's the last thing on your mind. If you want to gain muscle size and strength as quickly as possible, you should never, ever miss a workout..
Or should you?
Well actually here's the thing..
Yes, consistency is important. Yes, you should be sticking to your workout schedule the vast majority of the time. Yes, simply bailing on the gym out of pure laziness is not acceptable.
However, to get a point across, I would like to bring up a quote from the late Mike Mentzer. He said: "Rituals have nothing to do with science".
What you need to keep in mind is that the human body is an extremely complex biological "machine", and that not every single workout and recovery period is identical.
In other words, just because your schedule states that you must train on days X, Y and Z doesn't necessarily mean that this will always be the optimal pattern every single week of the year.
If you wake up on a training day and your muscles still ache, you feel physically tired and your regular motivation to train just feels like it has been zapped away... don't you think your body just might be trying to tell you something?
Why would you force yourself to train in a situation where more recovery time is clearly needed, and when you know that your training performance will be less than optimal?
If your body, muscles and mind are clearly still reeling from the previous session, what sense does it make to force yourself to train despite this?
After all, we know that the recovery phase is the ultimate "muscle builder" (the actual process of adding new muscle tissue occurs out of the gym on resting days) and that intense weight training is extremely demanding on the body as a whole..
So why would you deliberately interfere with the very process that transforms your physique in the first place? Why not take an extra 24 hours off and re-enter the gym once you feel physically and mentally ready to do so?
What harm could there possibly be in that?
There is no threat of losing muscle size or strength, as these decreases require 2 or more weeks of inactivity to be set into motion. Yet, there is the perfectly likely reality of a positive gain in the form of proper recovery from the previous workout and improved performance on the following workout.
The underlying key is to listen to your body.
Rituals truly do not have anything to do with science, and if it feels obvious to you that additional rest is needed, take it.
Don't force your body into another battle with the weights if it clearly is not ready to do so. Don't let your ego get in the way; just because some muscle building guru told you to "never skip a workout" doesn't mean that it's always the best approach.
You do have to use this method with caution, though...
If you develop the mindset of only training when you "feel like it", then it's likely that you'll start delaying your workouts and convincing yourself that it's correct to do so when in fact it is not.
There are plenty of times when you won't feel like training purely for psychological reasons rather than concrete physical reasons, and that's not what I'm talking about here.
I'm simply talking about those days where you are able to sense that from a physical standpoint, taking an extra day of rest would be the better course of action.
Just remember... there is no long-term harm in taking an extra day of rest, but there IS the very real and immediate harm of training your body without being fully recovered first.
If in that much doubt, just take the day off!
Want more no B.S muscle-building strategies and articles just like this one?
Check out the rest of this FREE Bodybuilding Series or for all the details, go straight to the
Complete Bodybuilding Package.
In a bodybuilding world full of marketing hype and exaggerations, I cut straight through the lies and give you the no-nonsense truth about what it takes to gain muscle fast.
Go Natural, Say NO to Steroids
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Comments: 6
There's a lot more to learn..
It's great that you mention working out every day keeps you in a positive mode and also shows a sign of discipline as well, but the truth is that when it comes to "building muscle" being disciplined means that you are able to keep yourself from over-working but staying consistent enough to be working out 3 times per week.
Comparing Aerobic to Anaerobic activity and their effects on the human body is like comparing apples to poultry, it's just not the same.
Bodybuilding is about achieving your goal in the most productive way possible without spending lots of wasted time doing it and you can't get there if your body is constantly being taxed to a level where it's not able to recover when it really counts.
So the point of my article is that if you aren't feeling well enough on a given day to lift an extremely high amount of weight to begin with, in addition to adding more weight than you were previously lifting the last time you did that muscle group, then it's a good idea to perhaps take a break that day and come back when you know you are more capable.
You have to understand that in order to stimulate muscle growth you must constantly make progress in terms of the amount of weight that you lift so it's critical that you're at your best when the time comes to workout or else it's a wasted effort.. you're just going through the motions and stressing the body for almost nothing.
Muscles don't get stronger by lifting the same amount over and over. They only get stronger and then bigger by being forced to lift heavier and heavier amounts of weight or resistance.
Lifting heavy weights doesn't just burn calories and provide cardiovascular benefits like aerobics do.. it taxes your body's central nervous system, depletes your ATP levels along with the fact that it expends it's resources breaking down protein into amino acids to be converted to new muscle fiber.
In essence.. when your body is telling you that it's not up to par you need to heed it's advice and regroup for another day when progress is at hand.
Again aerobics is different.. for the most part you should be able to do activities on a daily basis without having issues. Aerobics are great for burning calories by immobilizing body-fat through oxidation, raising heart rate for improved cardiovascular development and it also provides ways of flushing out most of the body's internal systems.
None of the things I mentioned about aerobics are extremely taxing to the body as long as proper hydration is taking place, therefore only daily recovery is needed in most cases unless the person is a beginner.
Most of the time if you are not feeling that great and you go ahead and do your aerobic activity, you end up feeling better afterwords. Unfortunately that's not going to be the case when lifting heavy weights for a 30-40 minute session.
So I agree with you that when it comes to cardiovascular type workouts, it's best to do them on a daily basis if possible.
If anyone else that read my article was confused, hopefully this has given you a better understanding. If it has not.. let me know :)