Bodybuilding growth doesn’t occur in the gym, no matter how big and pumped you might feel while training. Bodybuilding growth occurs at home in the 24 to 72 hours following the workout. As you sleep, your body uses nutrients from the food you eat to repair your body from the grueling workout and prepare new muscle growth to handle the workload the next time the body is faced with it.

Many bodybuilders never achieve their bodybuilding potential, even though they train hard and intelligently and “leave it all on the gym floor”. They neglect the fact that training is only 1/3 of the equation of muscle growth. Nutrition and rest are the other 2/3 of bodybuilding success. However, many don’t realize this until after years of spinning their wheels in the gym, completing the same workouts and looking the same, with little to no progress.

In the two to three days after you train a muscle group, the body slowly removes waste byproducts of training from the region. It also replenishes your glycogen stores, and heals the millions of torn muscle fibers. Your blood needs to have essential amino acids in the region to facilitate this healing, and that is where nutrition comes in. Your body also needs to have adequate nervous system resources in place to grow – namely, a lack of cortisol, which is released when you subject your body to the rigors of training. Rest helps the central nervous system to recover and helps reduce cortisol levels in the body.

If you ever find yourself stuck at a developmental plateau, try eating and resting more – not training more. You might be at this sticking point not because of any training flaws, but because your body cannot recover from your training. You might even find that improved recovery and recuperation actually allows you to train harder and longer in the gym, and the success cycle continues to build upon itself!

As the months and years pass in your bodybuilding journey, you will recover faster. You’ll learn what foods and how much sleep you need to heal adequately from tough workouts. Your muscle groups will adapt to the tough workloads that challenged you in your initial beginner stages, and you’ll soon find you recover faster and faster from progressively tougher workouts. The key is to recognize that you control muscle recovery rates by controlling how much food and sleep your body gets – so never neglect these two important aspects of bodybuilding success.