Many people feel muscle degeneration as soon as they don't practice, which is largely a psychological illusion for the following reasons:
Muscle congestion disappears
Practice on Saturday is really hard, admire! When we exercise, we all feel the swelling of muscle congestion. From a scientific point of view, a lot of blood moisture and metabolites are stored between muscle cells, and the circumference of muscle is short, big and tight.
But when we stop training, the feeling of muscle swelling will disappear, and we will start to relax, and psychologically we will have the illusion of muscle disappearance.
2. The root cause of strength reduction
After stopping training for a period of time, I found that my strength was reduced and I could not reach the state when I was training. This involves the "neuromuscular mechanism". It is found that the connection strength between nerve and muscle begins to weaken after stopping training, which is one of the reasons for the decline of muscle and strength.
Moreover, muscle growth is very slow, which requires not only day-to-day training, but also enough nutrition as support, so muscle atrophy is also a very slow process.
Studies have proved that stopping training for 3 weeks will not have a long-term negative impact on muscles and strength for beginners and advanced trainers. The decrease of muscle volume caused by 3-week training suspension period is more due to the decrease of water and sugar in muscle than the atrophy of myofibrils.
3. Muscles have memories
Have you ever heard of "muscle memory"? The muscles of the human body have a memory effect. After the same action is repeated many times, the muscles will form a conditioned reflex.
Muscles acquire memory very slowly, but once they acquire memory, they forget it very slowly. Even if you stop training, you can quickly return to your previous level. Research shows that after stopping training for 4-6 weeks, if you practice 1 month seriously, you can recover to the original 90%.
However, aerobic training is different from strength training. After stopping training for one month, aerobic capacity and endurance will soon decline, because its maximum oxygen uptake is greatly reduced.
4. Muscles need rest
Training every day is not a good thing, because muscle repair takes time. Training will destroy muscle fibers, and the human body can repair damaged muscle fibers through its own immune function to achieve muscle growth. If you practice too often, your muscle level will only drop.
Generally speaking, the recovery time of large muscle groups should be at least 72 hours, such as chest muscles, back muscles and lower limb muscles. It takes at least 48 hours for small muscle groups to recover, such as biceps brachii and triceps brachii.
Therefore, it is not recommended to exercise the same muscle group for two consecutive days to avoid muscle fatigue and miss the best growth time.