Look at everything you do in the gym right now. Think about the hard, brutal, and long workouts you endure on a daily basis. Then watch the food you shovel down the hatch on a daily basis. Now, look at your results. Think about the progress you have made in the gym in the last year. Are they satisfactory? Now, consider what kind of rest you would have had if you had given your body a separate and individual ‘growth period’ each day where new muscle was built.
Plan your next year. Will you continue to advance at the same slow pace? Intrigued to see what kind of weightlifting or bodybuilding gains you can get from a daily ‘power nap’? Naps are a great way to energize your body for the second half of the day, as well as to give your body a short ‘growth period’ in which new muscle growth can occur outside of the normal sleep window. 8 hours at night. Bodybuilders grow when we rest, and a midday break is amazing for generating more new muscle growth.
Before or after? What is the best time to take a nap? Do you want to sleep before your workout, providing a fresh and rested body for the gym? Or is it better to complete your workout and immediately enjoy a great meal rich in smart carbohydrates and slow digesting carbohydrates, and then go to sleep? This question can be answered based on your available options with work, school, family, etc. However, if you have the ability to sleep at any time, then you need to give both of them a chance. Record your results and decide which period of time delivers the best results in the gym!
Making time for a nap can be difficult. If you are a stay-at-home parent, this should be pretty simple. When the child sleeps, YOU SLEEP! Of course, you may already be sleeping at the same time from exhaustion. Take advantage of this time to grow, because as you know, your child is already taking advantage of it to grow! Don’t forget to eat before you crash. If you run your own business, as many young bodybuilders do (there must be something about that Type A personality and work ethic), then you should be able to schedule a ‘meeting’ each day around 12:30 and give yourself adequate time to recover from the morning
The length of the nap will depend on the person. Some lifters will benefit from 20 minutes and others will enjoy a full 90 minutes. If you use anabolic steroids, you already recover faster from your workouts, so you may be under the impression that a nap won’t do you much good. However, it grows larger when using steroids, and another growth period during the day may be ideal for this!
Whether you are a natural or steroid user, bodybuilder, or weightlifter, using power naps will make you bigger and stronger faster than you can imagine.