It's like asking whether your right leg or your left leg is more important. You need
both to walk.
Likewise, you need training
and rest unless you want to waste away into nothing. If you don't train you don't improve, if you don't sleep you don't improve, either. And each has its place, first the left foot, then the right - not one of them several times in a row.
I always quote Arnie as saying, "you've got to stay hungry." I'm a chef, right, and so you might wonder how we decide serving sizes. Well, if we give people
more than or exactly as much as they can eat, they go away feeling stuffed, and whenever they think of our restaurant, they say to themselves, "that's where I felt sick." So they don't come back.
If we give people
much less than they want to eat, they think we're stingy and get pissed off, and lose interest.
So the key is to give them
just a bit less than what they want. You know that level of fullness where you think seriously about ordering another course, but realise you couldn't finish it. Then they go away thinking, "that was great, I wanted more." Around 80-90% of what they want, that's what we give them.
Well, same with workouts. You should work out until you think, "Should I do another exercise? I'd like to, but I couldn't handle another 5 sets, maybe only 2... okay I'll stop now." So as you walk out, you feel
hungry, you want to come back! You don't feel sick.
I was doing 4-5 weight sessions weekly, and really blasting myself. It was too much, twice I almost squashed myself on the bench. So now I've wound it back - Mon/Wed/Fri is weights, Tue/Thu/Sat is going for a run. This is working really well for me, I pumped out more chins than before today, and found the other exercises easier, too.
"You've got to stay hungry!"