One of the best ways for someone to get into maximum shape and shed those unwanted pounds is by starting body building workouts. Weight training will both increase the resting metabolism, turning the body into a 24/7 fat-burning machine, and tone and define the muscles for that sculpted look. Seems easy enough, doesn’t it?

There is, as there always is, where getting into shape is concerned, a catch. Body building workouts demand a huge effort and an iron will if you are going to stay with them long enough to see results. And the effort and will power to not merely that you will stay with your chosen program of body building workouts; they also mean you will make the effort to educate yourself about when it’s time to stop.

Stop When You Are Tired Many people, in the eagerness to achieve their perfect new bodies, get carried away with the difficulty and duration of their body building workouts. They don’t want to stop until they are literally falling down with fatigue, and in pushing themselves are simply increasing their risk of injury.

Any form of exercise, when done to the point of exhaustion over and over again, can stop being fun and start being an ordeal. And many people facing ordeals find it easy to avoid them. If your body building workout feels like it is becoming an ordeal, you need to take a break. You probably needed to take a break anyway, just to give your body a chance to recuperate and build new muscle, but now you need an emotional break as well.

If you are new to body building workouts, you may not have done enough research to learn that your body experiences the greatest benefits from them during the days when you are idle. Those days are your recovery days, and it is during them that the muscle you so long for is actually created. Muscle mass does not increase while you are exercising; its too busy working. It increases for the two days--or even longer--following your workout.