Experienced athletes say that the most important parameter for successful training is their regularity. Everything is quite obvious – train constantly and the result will come to you in your hands. But here, in fact, the most interesting begins: some guys, in principle, cannot comply with the strict requirements of the sports schedule for months and years, and if one of them remains in bodybuilding, then his training has a noticeably “torn” character in time; others, on the contrary, follow the well-known recommendation so tightly and committed that even after several years they can boast of not even missing a workout, despite a multi-day training split.

One thing unites both the first and second ones – a lack of understanding that for the best, and fastest, result, it is more important not to follow inner convictions, often of a spontaneous nature, – to skip or not skip workouts, to do it according to mood or at the behest of a whim – but on the contrary, to find “golden mean”, which will allow you to train for a long time and not overload your own psycho-emotional sphere unnecessarily. It is remarkable that the search for this very “middle” does not lie in the plane of personal psychology, but rather in the field of physiology.

The point is that gaps in training, or rather, planned breaks and vacations, should first of all serve the overall goal of the training – timely and full recovery. And in this matter, nothing can be superfluous.

Loading skeletal muscles, ligaments, tendons and even the skeleton during training, the athlete is simply obliged to give his own body time for life-giving and regeneration that brings results. As tools for this work, nutrition and time for recovery are at his disposal, both of which are within his full competence. Moreover, only he, even sometimes resorting to outside consultations, can say with absolute certainty whether the restoration has passed all its stages. This is necessary only for one purpose, so that the loads in the gym not only load the body, but competently alternate with the process of its recovery, which is no less significant for the growth of muscle mass and strength indicators than the training itself. For this significant reason, a training split should always be tailored to the individual needs of the individual. person in recovery. Otherwise, he will not see success in bodybuilding.

But even this will not be enough for the human body. Making attacks on the resources of their own body for many months, bodybuilders thereby load not only the musculoskeletal system. The whole being of the body works in high intensity mode: the digestive and excretory organs, the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, and what is more important for an athlete who is interested in the results no less than in his health is a complex system of hormonal regulation of the body. And when it comes to recovery, it is simply impossible to forget about the restoration of the vital organs and the work of the endocrine glands and is fraught with the failure of the body, the first true signs of which are always a drop in the effectiveness of training, a decline in mood and strength, in a word, all signs of overtraining.

In order to include this important moment of full recovery of the body from hard and long workouts, just as it is done when compiling a weekly split, it is necessary to add special periods of complete rest from loads, any: anaerobic and aerobic, to the program. Thus, giving the body time to recover to its previous level of performance, as well as further strengthening its strength reserves for new, yet upcoming loads. For this, you don’t need much – it’s enough to interrupt once every three to four months for a restorative vacation, preferably, thus completing the next training cycle.