Ideal sleep for hypertrophy
A crucial, often overlooked factor in the process of gaining muscle and losing fat is SLEEP! You could have the best nutritionist… the best personal trainer… the best workout…
Ideal sleep duration
BUT what about sleep? Experts disagree on the ideal amount of rest… but you can’t do without a good night’s sleep: it improves your mood and performance and helps prevent illness. And everyone needs to get the right amount of sleep for them.
Quality of rest
The most important thing is sleep quality! A 2010 study analyzed 10 overweight people in an experiment involving two sleep conditions: 8.5 hours and 5.5 hours, respectively.
The same participants followed the same diet in both conditions. The results showed that restricting sleep affects the body by reducing fat oxidation, increasing appetite, lowering basal metabolic rate, and causing muscle loss. In short: Get a good night’s sleep! And only stay out late if it’s really worth it.
Pay close attention to your sleep
Sleep is simply one of the most important activities for the proper functioning of the body. Sleeping means taking a break every 24 hours — 8 to 10 hours (which we’ll discuss in the following sections).
A good night’s sleep can improve performance at every level, including better reflexes during physical activity and greater mental alertness.
Mental rest is achieved by ensuring that brain processes and neural connections restore the organ’s function. The result is basically a “cleansing” of the brain, ensuring that memories and learned information are retained while information considered irrelevant is discarded.
As for rest between sets…
First of all, there is no fixed duration. Using guidelines that say 30, 45, or 60 seconds is ideal may not suit the goals of every person who strength trains. Remember that every body has its own biological individuality, and we should respect that.
That’s why we use the concept of an “interval,” which generally ranges from 30 seconds to 2 minutes. But, I repeat, it’s not fixed!
Tension-focused workouts are characterized by low repetitions, heavier loads, and longer rest intervals between sets.
Metabolic workouts are characterized by high repetitions, lighter loads (compared with tension-focused workouts), and shorter rest intervals between sets.
Ahhhh, and you might be wondering: Which method is best for hypertrophy? There isn’t one best method! What matters is finding the right fit for your workout routine! The recommendation is to vary the stimuli to avoid hitting a plateau!
