If you’re serious about a goal, you want to do everything you can to accomplish it. However, sometimes giving it all you have every day can backfire. If you feel like all your hard work has shown little to no results lately, there are a few reasons why. You may be overtraining and undertraining at the same time and sabotaging your results. Depending on your diet, genetics, and supplement use, you can only recover from a level of high-intensity resistance training per session. This is referred to as the maximal recoverable volume. If you go past this point, you’re not adding much hypertrophy benefit (increase in size, as by thickening of muscle fibers). Still, you could be negatively impacting your ability to recover, leaving you overly sore for days at a time and possibly making you feel weaker during your next sessions. Do not hesitate to take a few days off or enjoy a deload week for maximum recovery and benefits. A deload week is exactly what it sounds like, it’s a week to relax, unwind, and give your body that extra little recovery it needs so you can maximize future gains. Vinyasa yoga, stretching, bodyweight exercises, or band work are great ways to be active, yet appropriately meet your individual fitness goals, that can help you recharge both your mind and your body.

Coincidently, another misconception is the power of vitamins. I tell my clients all the time that taking vitamins will change everything but, no, you will not wake up and look in the mirror to see the difference the next morning.  The health benefits of taking vitamins include their ability to prevent and treat various diseases including heart problems, high cholesterol levels, and eye and skin disorders. Most vitamins facilitate many of the body’s mechanisms and perform functions which cannot be performed by any other nutrients. 

Here is a basic breakdown. A vitamin is an organic compound, meaning it contains carbon, a mineral needed to sustain life. Most vitamins need to come from healthy foods and are essential for the human body because we cannot produce enough on our own. With that said, everyone has different requirements. If you do not get what you need, certain medical conditions can result, hence supplementing. There are 13 vitamins and are split into two types, water-soluble and fat-soluble. Water-soluble do not stay in the body long, as the body cannot store them. Vitamin C and all B vitamins are water-soluble. Fat-soluble are stored in fat tissue and the liver. They can stay in your system as reserves for days or sometimes weeks. Vitamin A, D, E, K are all fat-soluble. 

For supplements or more on deload programs and how/when to deload, contact Cody at Rininger@2BImperium.com or 712.870.0758

By Cody Rininger