Rest/recovery days?

[Avalonna]

It has been drilled into my head that one should never train the same muscle group on consecutive days. If you want to work out every day, do legs one day, upper body the next, etc. However, two mini-challenges I am currently participating in (Demon Slaying and Nerdi Clause) have folks doing as much of one exercise (squats, or pushups, or pullups) as they can manage for several days at a stretch.

Don't get me wrong - I am LOVING these mini-challenges. I love the nerdy role-playing aspect, and I love that they get me out of my standard kettlebell-routine rut to try new things. And I'm sure working the same muscle group every day for a week or so is fine. But what about every day for longer periods of time? Are daily pushups/pullups/squats good, or should we give those muscle groups a rest? Do rest days apply more to lifting heavy with barbells?

[Nuala]

You are supposed to take rest days even for BW training, it's more effective this way. You muscles use the rest to rebuild and recover and thus become stronger. But it is also possible not to take any rest day, it's less effective, more tiring and, to be true, it hurts a lot more. But still do-able if you have no choice or just for the hell of it (if you are working in a very physical job, you can't tell your boss that you need some rest day every other day after all ).

Still, it's a huge strain on the body, when I did huge amount of push-ups for 30 days without rest, I was in bed one hour to two hours earlier than my usual bed time and doing other training was difficult. Of course, I had some results even without resting but I also had to pay a price. So, taking time to rest is usually better, for better muscle recovery and time to work on other exercises.

[Avalonna]

That's what I thought. But I'm willing to sacrifice to save Nerd Christmas or slay an evil demon!

[GoToTheGround]

I personally think it's entirely down to the individual, their training, their nutrition, their goals etc. If I were going to generalise I'd say they're needed far more if you're lifting maximal loads in a workout. That's been my experience thus far: I could wrestle/grapple 2x day every day without incident but once adding heavy barbell work the recovery time was warranted.

[Chaze]

Muscle grows while it recovers from what you put it through (working out). So if you want to see real gains (I.e. get bigger) you definitely need to give the muscle adequate recovery time for the amount of strain you put on it.

Endurance is somewhat of a different matter. If you are looking to burn calories, tone, and work your heart (cardiovascular system), the rules are somewhat different. You can certainly do basic body weight circuits and cardio 6 days a week and see plenty of gains in that department. The main thing you need to worry about there is the occasional rest day (based on what you feel your body needs) for the sake of your Central Nervous System.

That applies even to weight lifting. If you did a different body part every day you could easily work out 7 days a week and not get back to the same body part again for a week or more. But it would be far too taxing on your CNS, which is why even people who only work each body part once a week still need typically two rest days.

[Avalonna]

Interesting. Normally I strength train (kettlebells & bodyweight) twice a week. During the mini-challenges I've been doing brief bodyweight exercises every day. Just wondering what the implications were. Thanks!

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

Really it depends on how close to maximal load you are using and how close you go to fatigue. I can do sets of 20 push ups every day and be fine, but if I start trying to do 30 (my max is 31-35 depending on the day), then I need more than 24 hours recovery because I'm pushing the muscles and my nervous system to their limits. If I try to do push ups again the next day, it's very hard to get close to my max again because I'm not recovered.

On the other end, if I increase the weight and push myself to close to failure on reps of 5 on the bench, I need more recovery because once again I'm pushing close to my limits which damages the muscle system and it needs time to repair, but if I'm doing sets of 5-10 at a weight I can do 15-20 at, I probably don't need much recovery time.

The theme here is that if you are not pushing your limits you can probably do an exercise every day, at least for a short time. The problem is that since you aren't pushing your limits, you aren't forcing an adaption and you aren't getting better.

If getting better isn't your goal, then long term it may be fine not to push your limits, like if you are going for a 20 minute jog every day to burn off some extra calories. You don't care about speed or distance, you want to do that jog every day to burn calories, so you would intentionally not force an adaption to stress.

If you do want to get better and are forcing an adaption through youe exercise, your body needs time in order to grow and recover to the trauma that instigates that adaption.

[Avalonna]

The theme here is that if you are not pushing your limits you can probably do an exercise every day, at least for a short time. The problem is that since you aren't pushing your limits, you aren't forcing an adaption and you aren't getting better.

You just made a light bulb go off above my head. This is such a basic concept and one I have heard over and over (make your workouts brief and intense with plenty of recovery time), but the way you framed your post made me understand it differently. I tend NOT to push myself - I do each exercise until I get fatigued or uncomfortable, but I rarely push myself to near-failure. Except with pullups and pushups, but I usually only do one or two sets of those. My muscle definition has been improving, but slowly, and I'm only seeing minor gains in strength.

I work out at home and my heaviest weight is a 35 lb kettlebell, so going up in weight is not really feasible, but I could certainly do more reps and go closer to failure, and more sets so that my muscles are more stressed.

Hmmm. You have got me thinking....

[Avalonna]

Tried to ramp things up at home and it didn't work out too well. I usually do squats with two 20 lb dumbbells (total of 40 lbs). The only way I could think of to make my squats heavier was to use my 35 lb kettlebell with my 25 lb kettlebell to total 60 lbs - I would be a bit off balance, but I do deadlifts with those two kettlebells and that works out fine. Well, I could not clean the 35-pounder. I have weak wrists and have had on-again-off-again tendonitis in my wrists for many years. I cleaned the 25-pounder and managed to get hold of the 35 in the clean position and cranked out a few squats, but my wrist couldn't handle it and I had to quit. It was sore for the rest of my workout.

[Barmacral]

Instead of just doing squats you can do alternative ones, like split squats, work your way towards pistol squats, or air squats.

[aj_rock]

Side note: legs are kind of a special case, in which they can take higher loads than other body parts.

Unless you were planning on staying in bed all day and not walking anywhere, avoiding use of your legs is pretty difficult This is a good example of why the relative load is more important. If you can only do 5 push-ups at a time, then doing push-ups every day will slow things down. If you've completed the 100 push-up challenge, dropping to do a few as a party trick after working your 5RM bench isn't as big of a deal.

[Siferiax]

Thanks for all the info in this thread! It's really good to know (I had no idea)

[Waldo]

The body is much more adaptable than many people have been led to believe.

I have not tried it personally but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence out there for people having a lot of success squatting near max loads with autoregulated volume 5+ days a week. Obviously you don't just jump into something like this as a beginner, but it does not lead to all the overtraining horrors that people have been led to believe occur. If you don't wash out early on, you just get used to it and roll with it.

People with heavy physical jobs can go out and do it 5 days a week without issue. And still come home and work out later.

Given sufficient fuel and rest, the body is capable of huge work outputs.