Question from 52PicksHere:

Hello Jaret, I love all the videos. I’m 18, go to the gym 7 times a week for 3 hours average and I watched a video in which you were saying it’s bad to workout 7 times a week. I do different workouts everyday. Example: back and biceps on Monday, Tuesday is chest and triceps, Wednesday I do legs and back and I do abs and cardio in all the workouts. I have been getting bigger and been working out almost 3 months. Should I keep going with what I’m doing or should I take days off? I like working out and it keeps me out of trouble.

Answer from Jaret:

You should take off at least one to two days a week. Even though you are doing different bodyparts everyday, lifting weights is very stressful on the body. It affects your organs, your central nervous system and metabolic functioning. That means everyday, your kidneys and liver are getting taxed with lots of toxic buildup. Your body can’t possibly recover itself working out everyday and then it affects your body to “concentrate” on building muscle and burning fat. It goes sort of into a “preservation mode”. Also, your central nervous system is delicate. Odds are if you’re going 7 days a week for months and you’re not getting sick or feeling like crap everyday then that means you’re not going that intense during your workouts or as intense as you could be going if you were well rested. Intensity is what builds muscle, not just doing exercises. Your muscles respond to a stimulus, not the fact that you’re doing X number of reps for X number of sets of a specific exercise. So you should probably go 5 days a week really intense instead. You’ll notice more muscle growth and you’ll stay just as lean if done properly. If it keeps you out of trouble then just keep doing what you’re doing because the gym is always better than that. But then I suggest you have a few (prob 3 max) days a week where you go really intense and the other 4 are there to go very light, work on form, flush blood into the muscles, and just take it kind of easy to not tax your body too much.

Email me your question: jaret@muscleprodigy.com