If I work a group of muscles and they aren’t sore the next day, should I work them again?
If I work a group of muscles and they are still sore 2-3 days later, should I work them again anyway or wait untilt they aren’t sore anymore?
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No.
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Probably not…but
…aftet you get in the groove, your recovery time will shorten, so this won’t be such an issue. Generally (GENERALLY), you should listen to your body, so hold off.
Anticipating other input and questions:
Now, some occupations require exertion of certain muscles everyday, and while one’s body can get used to this, this does not mean that one should train thinking, “hmmm, construction workers get the same muscles beat up every day, and they look good”.
When you are training, you are trying to avoid injury and preserve the long term health of your body (think ligaments, tendons and joints). In some occupations, such as sports and construction, you can work past the pain, but the long term prognosis for your joints and connective tissues is not all that great.
So, pain and soreness = REST.
For number 2, it depends on how sore you are. If it hurts a little when you flex, go for it. If it hurts without moving, you’ve injured yourself and need to think recovery. Anywhere in between, it’s your call.
Unless you’re working with a trainer who has you on a special routine, you should give your body at least a day to recover. Weightlifting works because the lifting breaks down muscle fibers. Your body needs time to rebuild them. If you do back-to-back workouts, your body won’t be able to recover optimally.
If your schedule allows you to lift everyday, try working half your muscles each day. Like upper body M-W-F and lower body T-Th-Sa.
And soreness is not necessarily a requirement in weightlifting. You can get results without getting sore.
For #2: I would say to wait if you’re sore, unless you’re in a firmly-entrenched routine and you added weight recently. Twice a year (more or less…it’s not a schedule), I’ll add another weight onto most of my exercises. I’m almost always sore on the day after, from the change. The soreness goes away after a few sessions.
-Cem
I know that the rule of thumb is waiting 48 hours between workouts but I’ve always wondered how they approach this in military basic training. Don’t these guys do push-ups, pull-ups, chin-ups to exhaustion on a daily basis?
Maybe this is material for a different thread but how are muscle soreness, pulled ligaments, pulled tendons, torn muscles attended to in basic training?
It doesn’t seem to me that drill sergants would be the best physical trainers with the death marches, do-em-till-you-drop exercises, no pain no gain mentality along with no recovery time.
Another related question:
I’ve always heard that abs are one muscle group you can work everyday. Is this true? and if so why are they different?
Abs aren’t different, but most people don’t train them with enough intensity to have any significant effect.
Does the wait-a-while thing apply to body-weight exercises like push-ups, sit-ups, lunges, dips etc? Or are these at a low enough intensity that they may be done every day?
It depends. If the exercise does not cause your muscle fibers to break down, you could do it every day. If you worked out in this fashion, you would make your muscles more efficient, but not necessarily stronger.
Your muscles will eventually adapt to the stress. That’s why for weightlifting it’s important to increase the weight in small amounts. If you don’t increase the weight, your muscles won’t get bigger. However, working out at the same weight will prevent your mucles from getting smaller. So there is an advantage to doing something like X pushups per day–you’re keeping your chest and arm muscles the same size. If you stopped doing them, your body, being the efficient machine it is, will break down the extra muscle it no longer needs.
I guess you could break down weightlifting like this:
[ul]low stress/low reps – minimal benefit[/ul]
[ul]low stress/high reps – small increase in muscle mass. Muscles become more efficient at using energy. Can repeat the exercise frequently.[/ul]
[ul]high stress/low reps – large increase in muscle mass. Must rest between workouts.[/ul]
[ul]high stress/high reps – very large increase in muscle mass. More likelyhood of injury. Need longer rest between workouts.[/ul]
The standard advice in weightlifting is to do a weight that you can lift 8 times but not 12. Then do two or three repetitions of that weight (like chest press 50 pounds 8 times, rest, lift it another 8 times, rest, lift it another 8 times. That makes three sets of 8 reps.) Skip a day and repeat the workout by doing one more rep. So now you lift 50 pounds 9 times instead of 8. Keep repeating that process until you’re lifting the weight 12 times. On your next workout after reaching 12, increase the weight by a small amount (5-10 pounds) and go back to 8 reps. Keep repeating this cycle and you will develop more muscle mass and keep soreness and injury to a minimum.
That’s just a basic routine. If you have specific needs (I gotta have massive biceps, dude!), then you’ll need a different sort of workout. But that advice will work for most people who are looking to get more fit.
Like I said, for pro athletes and other occupations, you can do it, but no one is considering the long term affects. You can destroy yourself daily and repeatedly if you want to be like kids in basic training to defend a country or world class athletes to gain fame or fortune, or be like construction workers trying to hack out a living. If you want to be like them, wherein you destroy your long term prognosis (back pain, arthiritis, chronic inflamation, etc), then by all means train when you are sore and do like they do.
If you want to improve your looks/health and don’t want to be a hobbled 50 year old, then allow proper healing and rest time.
I had read somewhere that researches had determined that 80%-90% of your benefit (not sure how they defined “benefit” ie. strength, muscle mass, whatever) occured during the first set and that 2nd and 3rd sets of an exercise resulted in minimal gain. Therefore they recommended doing one set of 10-12 reps. Sorry I don’t remember where I read it so I can’t offer a cite.
Have you ever heard anything along those lines or similar?
No… in basic training you exercise, but not to exhaustion. Most of the time you are learning military stuff.
sort of, I have a workout routine that I picked up somewhere (sorry no cite either) where you do one set but you do it to failure, that is keep going on each exersise til you cant do another one. its pretty low impact and plenty effective if you are just trying to beef up a bit and get in better shape, I rarely have any soreness on day 2 and its definitly made a difference in my physique in a short period of time. (couple months and there was a definite change in size and defintion.
it may have been something like the “no sweat” workout or something like that.
Just my $0.02 - as I get older, muscle soreness lasts longer after either a layoff or a hard workout (weirdly, it also takes longer to set in - WTF?). For me, one way to shake off the lingering soreness is a light weight workout. I’m not sure if it’s the stretching, increased circulation, or if I’m breaking down micro-scar tissue, but this seems, in my estimation and for me, to speed complete recovery from soreness. This is definitely targeted at soreness - not pulls, tweaks, etc.
I’ve also had good results with very hard massage on sore muscles - like, almost as hard as I can push with a thumb, baseball, or fist. This is what I’ll do now if I feel a knot that’s not going away. YMMV.
I don’t know for sure about that. Weightlifting increases both the size and endurance of the muscle. It could be that you get 80-90% of the size-related benefit on the first set. I’m just guessing there. But the more reps you do, the more endurance your muscle will have.
I have always heard that most people overtrain their abs in a (fruitless) effort to spot-reduce. I work mine twice a week. YMMV, void where prohibited, etc.
This gets into a couple contentious issues:
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Is more than one set productive?
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What’s the role of studies in one’s body of training knowledge?
Both of those are a little off topic, but for someone just starting out, one set is definitely too little. The primary purposes of a beginner’s training is to learn the motions, and that requires more than 10-12 reps a session.
There exists a body of weightlifting “dogma” out there which changes over time. The dogma currently suggests lifting three or four times a week with a day of rest between. Dogma generally does not take your individual goals into account.
The argument against lifting daily is that to gain strength you need to make slow gains (in weight lifted, number of reps, less rest time between sets, etc.). This requires a certain degree of effort. Your nervous system requires time to rest from this effort. Many trainers thus say lift three or four times a week and take a rest day between lifting days. Many weightlifters would only do between 1-6 different exercises per session to allow for greater intensity. As an extension, some lifters espouse the dogma that routines need to be completed in 45-60 minutes… but not everyone wants to be a powerlifter. The people who subscribe to the dogmas may not share your goals!
Weightlifting has lots of health benefits, but to realize these it should be done consistently. People who lift on a daily basis may show initial gains, but the nervous system may become overtaxed and these people often just quit. Better to lift a little less often and for many more years.
If you are not sore, you could probably work the muscles again. However, doing this on a regular basis might increase the chance of burnout. Also, you deprive yourself the opportunity to work other muscles, given that you can’t do everything the first day. Better to up the intensity a little next time, instead.
When you get started, soreness is a part of weightlifting. If the soreness is not extreme and does not increase a lot when you add weight, you need to work through it. If it hurts a lot or much more so when you add weight, it might be a more serious injury and you should not work that area until the pain is gone under load.
Perhaps this is a separate thread, but I’m curious… I’ve been working out for a short time, and I’m wondering which would be the best for me to consume after a workout. I should add that I want to gain muscle, not lose weight.
- Creatine
- Protein
- Creatine and Protein
- Something else