L'importance d'un repos adéquat pour une performance sportive optimale
It is commonly believed that to achieve substantial muscle growth it is necessary to constantly exhaust oneself in a gym and gobble up loads of protein supplements.
No one can deny that training and nutrition are crucial for getting good results. Yet there's another factor, no less important—indeed, fundamental. It is the rest the body needs in order to repair and strengthen itself.
Why is it necessary for the body to be fully restored before the next workout?
Lack of proper rest can lead to cumulative exhaustion and the development of overtraining syndrome. When that happens, training progress slows down and the results could even start to diminish. You feel constant fatigue, yet there's no growth; you try training even more but there's no improvement. Instead, the fatigue keeps growing and your motivation eventually starts to decline. If overtraining becomes chronic it can even lead to health problems.
The reason for that is the drop in anabolic hormones levels and the growth of catabolic hormones, especially cortisol. The immune system is weakened, there loss of muscle mass, and the body becomes more succeptible to infections and injuries of muscles and tendons.
Any physical effort puts stress on the body and brings it to a state of emergency. The body reacts with something called supercompensation. It's necessary to understand that muscles growth happens not DURING training but AFTER it—when you rest. The training itself produces micro-injuries—tiny tears in fibers and connective tissue of the muscles. They don’t present any danger; in fact, they are absolutely normal. The micro-injuries serve as a signal telling your body that muscle mass needs to grow in order to cope with increased workload and adapt to the new conditions.
Time between workouts is when this adaptation (the increase in muscle mass) is taking place. But that's not all. Rest is still needed to prepare the body for the next workout, to replenish its energy. The damaged muscles also have to be repaired. All that doesn't happen momentarily; it takes time.