Exercise Question - Why skip a day?

[diggerwam]

I’m new to exercising, I just joined my local Planet Fitness which just opened Friday. In one of the side rooms they have a 30 minute workout. 10 machines and rest, takes 30 minutes to complete.

Sign on the wall says you should only do this circuit 2-3 a week and make sure to skip a day. I’m curious as to the reasoning. I’m not kicking my ass on the amount of weight I’m lifting, there is resistance but I don’t want to strain anything. Or maybe I should be pushing myself right up to my weight limit. But then you are risking hurting yourself and ultimately skipping more than just the one day.

Ideas?? I’m overweight and middle aged. I’d like to lose weight but ultimately I’m looking to just get moving. It’s not healthy being this sedentary.

[Lynn_Bodoni]

Your body requires a certain amount of time to repair and rebuild the muscles after they’ve been exercised, which is why you’re supposed to alternate strength training one day and cardiovascular training the next.

[Iggy]

The idea is to give time for muscle to repair and grow. Some rest muscle groups - alternate upper body and lower body days. Some go all out on full body workouts but only go every other day.

Don’t over do it when you are trying to get in schedule that will be a new life habit. You need to find something that works and the time to do it. Then you can ramp up intensity of the workouts.

[Michael63129]

What I do is, if I still feel sore the next day, I don’t work out because the muscles haven’t fully recovered yet; this usually means I go every three days (skipping two days) which works pretty well. Of course, this depends on how hard you push yourself, but in my case that would mean that doing it only lightly would cause less soreness the following day(s), so I’d do it more often and vice-versa.

Also, if you want to lose weight as well, diet is just as important, especially restraining the tendency to eat more after working out (which is good if you want muscle, but not if you want weight loss).

[Amateur_Barbarian]

I think any misunderstanding comes from not differentiating between cardio exercise and strength/bulk/toning exercise. There’s no reason you can’t do cardio 7 days a week. The harder you are working strength/bulk, the more important the healing rest between sessions, for the reasons discussed above.

[FlyByNight512]

For figuring out the amount of weight you should be lifting, I’ve always been told to increase the weight until at the end of your set (8-ish repetitions of the movement) you feel that you can’t do one more with good form. If you can do eight or more repetitions without it being difficult to keep your form, you need to add more weight. If you can only do three or four with good form, then cut down a bit. I usually underestimate the amount of weight I can move by quite a bit. Forty pounds feels tough, sure, until I try sixty and realize it’s harder, but my form still isn’t in any danger. Hm, maybe eighty? Okay, that’s about right.

As long as you’re using good form, you’re not likely to injure yourself. It’s also much harder to injure yourself on weight machines rather than free-lifting weights. If you’re not sure what constitutes good form, ask the staff or a personal trainer for advice.

[DSeid]

Official American College of Sports Medicine statement on the subject:

How often should resistance training be performed?

Meta-analyses show that optimal gains in muscle function and size can occur with training two to three times per week (285,306,386). This can be effectively achieved with “whole body” training sessions completed two to three times a week or by using a “split-body” routine where selected muscle groups are trained during one session and the remaining muscle groups in the next. A rest period of 48 to 72 h between sessions is needed to optimally promote the cellular/molecular adaptations that stimulate muscle hypertrophy and the associated gains in strength (36).

Details in reference 285 claim that optimal frequency varies based on level of training:

For untrained individuals, maximal strength gains are elicited at a mean training intensity of 60% of 1 repetition maximum (1RM), 3 days per week, and with a mean training volume of 4 sets per muscle group. Recreationally trained nonathletes exhibit maximal strength gains with a mean training intensity of 80% of 1RM, 2 days per week, and a mean volume of 4 sets. For athlete populations, maximal strength gains are elicited at a mean training intensity of 85% of 1RM, 2 days per week, and with a mean training volume of 8 sets per muscle group. These meta-analyses demonstrate that the effort-to-benefit ratio is different for untrained, recreationally trained, and athlete populations; thus, emphasizing the necessity of appropriate exercise prescription to optimize training effect.

So yes what the others have all said.

[Rhythmdvl]

Does any of this relate to cardio? I would assume that an ostensibly out-of-shaper person taking on a new form (e.g. learning to x-country ski, moving from an elliptical to a rower, etc.) would require substantial muscle development. But since the goal is primarily calorie burn and cardio health, does it make a difference if a few months are spent every-other-daying it or going right to it and focusing more on heartrate. Any sense to that or should starting a new routine/machine entail taking it slower?

[DSeid]

The general principle is gradual progression. Aerobic does not need to be every other day even from the start but when starting a new aerobic exercise it is wise to start off with less intensity/duration and to build up.