As a fitness coach I have been on the fitness scene for 4 decades.
The biggest struggle I see among young enthusiastic trainees in gyms is that they are sadly ‘overtraining’ and not see the results they’re hoping to achieve.
This is predicated on the notion that ‘more is better’ and so they are executing haphazard high volume sets per body part and training 5-6 times per week. Not understanding that the basic physiology of the human body and how it adapts to ‘stresses’. IF you don’t know training adds a ‘stress’ to your body referred to as an ‘inroad’. And the compensatory mechanisms required for the body to recover are rest, sleep and nutrition.
So the main takeaway here is that the workout by itself when done correctly is to provide the ‘stimulus’ via a systematic approach of muscular intensity of exercise. [there’s a mutual exclusive relationship between the level of intensity of training and the duration of session] In other words, you cannot train very hard for a long time. Having completed a well executed training session the next phase is ‘recovery’ . And this is where most young trainees ‘jump the gun’ and think that well because I’m working on different body parts on my split routine I can just keep plowing through. You have to allow the body to compensate not just local recovery of the muscle groups worked but the whole systemic recovery of your nervous system as well. The actual ‘adaptation’ phase or ‘growth’ dynamic of muscle rebuilding and strengthening [getting larger] happens ONLY after the ‘recovery’ phase is complete NOT before. So if you jump in too early you have ‘short-circuited’ the growth mechanism and leave GAINS on the table everytime.
Peace out.