Assume I exercise regularly, let’s say I work out on a Friday and then don’t work out the rest of the weekend.
Is the muscle built Friday night while I sleep? All through Saturday? During the weekend?
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To answer your question, yes, all of the above
Once you hit a threshold of strain on your muscles, your body will start releasing hormones which tell it to build more muscle (or reform them, to be more precise)
This isn’t just a sleep thing, it will happen even while you’re working out still, but it’s definitely slower than while you’re sleeping or even just resting/sitting.
When you sleep your body releases more “rest and digest” hormones to use the nutrients you got during the day on your body’s down time to repair damaged tissue.
Those hormones from the workout earlier let your body know it should divert some of those resources to muscles specifically. Again though, those chemicals are always being produced, it just happens more when you’re sleeping.
It creates a bit of a feedback loop, your cells repair and those workout hormones get used up, then less are produced because of the muscle gain, so less of that muscle building takes place until you meet that new, higher threshold.
Your body is always going for equilibrium. Working out disrupts that, so your body creates the hormones to restore it by building muscle mass.
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