by Ken LeClair

Did you ever work as hard as you could for months at a time without a break? If so, you know how it feels to find that your daily existence has become a hardship as you grind the days out one after the other.  It is the same for the muscles and joints and the nervous system of a bodybuilder / athlete. It does everything we ask of it day after day and week after week and month after month but at some point it all becomes a hardship that cannot be endured without serious consequences.

Fatigue, loss of strength, irritability, sleeplessness all begin to manifest themselves as the harbingers of over training.  What to do?   Well,the best thing to do is to close the barn door before the horse runs out. With bodybuilding, take a week off every few months. Yes, that means don’t go to the gym for a whole week! Horror of horrors, but it has to be done.   Every muscle and joint in your body needs time to kick back and relax and strengthen and rebuild itself from all the wear and tear you put it through..Everything will be bigger and stronger and you will have back the edge that was beginning to dull without your realizing it. I am taking the next week off because I know I need to. In the past I have gotten into severe over training and ended up having to take several weeks off because I was totally run down to the point where I was actually running a fever and unable to sleep more than 2-3 hours per night.