When it comes to bodybuilding, much is written about the proper rest period needed to stimulate muscle growth. Despite common theory, muscle to not grow muscle during gym sessions. In fact the only time your muscle can grow and repair tissue damage is when you are resting or sleeping.
Besause of this; it is recommended not to exercises the same muscle group everyday. This is true for about 85% of muscles in your body. However, there are some muscle groups that not only can be worked out every day, but is almost necessary that they be worked on 5 or more days per week or else you won’t be able to gain lean muscle in those areas.
Such muscle groups include the forearms, calves and abdominals. You might be thinking, what makes these muscles so special that I can work them every day and not damage them?. The answer is simple, under normal everyday use these muscles a under constant stress are a “designed” to be very resilient and can therefore withstand normal weight training quite easily. Take your calves for example: whenever you walk you are flexing your calf muscles. Many people have found calves to be a pain in the backside in the growth department, no matter how much weight they press, the results are dismal. Every time you grab something with your hand your forearms are also used and as a result also need to be able to handle constant strain. Everytime you move your abdominals which are located at the center of your body are engaged.
So what exactly can you do in order to promote muscle growth in these areas? Basically, you can start prioritizing them in your bodybuilding workouts. You would spend a portion of every workout on these muscle groups during 4 of your workout days and, possible, you could add a special fifth workout day where you would spend the hour on these muscle groups alone.
If you do this and after a couple of month are not seeing any gain, you may want to start implementing what’s known as shock bombing. This tactic involves a high intensity workout session at the beginning of all gym sessions. Take the forearms as an example, you could begin my doing supersets of reverse barbell curls, reverse forearm extensions and forearm extensions for 3 sets of 10-15 reps. This will almost certainly shock you muscles into growth.
As with all muscle groups there is a point where overtraining is possible, so learn when to stop training those muscles. Once you have noticed that they have responded well to your exercise plans, you would then opt to just perform moderate exercises to help maintain their shape and size. Knowing when to stop your specialization training will certainly help lower the risk for overtraining them.
So yes, even highly resistant muscle groups can be boosted into growth if you know how to go about it. As such, you never need to feel that any of your muscles will ever be lagging again.
