Training every day?

[southernsara]

I hit the gym every weekday morning, and was wondering if it was OK to strength train all 5 days as long as I rotate the muscle groups. I.e., quads and "pull" one day then butt/hamstrings and "push" the next day. Is this a bad idea?

[spezzy]

I hit the gym every weekday morning, and was wondering if it was OK to strength train all 5 days as long as I rotate the muscle groups. I.e., quads and "pull" one day then butt/hamstrings and "push" the next day. Is this a bad idea?

I do push/quads, pull/glutes/hams for my schedule. I've been doing this for probably about 8 months now, and would definitely not do it every day (and trust me, I've tried).

The problem with doing it every day is that even though you're focusing on certain muscles, other muscles will get worked out too. For example, I do squats on my 'push' day, because they mainly work quads, but they also work glutes, hams, and lower back (which are all muscles on my pull day schedule).

I've found that a schedule of push/pull/off/push/pull/off/off seems to work the best for me.

[adam]

I agree that you should take off days. Compound exercises tend to be the most effective, and remember, you don't get more fit from training, you get more fit from recovering. Taking time off to sleep and rest is super important if you want to see good progress.

[Dantes]

I try to strength train every day if possible.

Just mix it up.

You don't have to go heavy every day

You don't need hour long workouts every day

Keep it short

Keep it sweet

Vary the intensity

Don't be afraid to take a day off if you need it.

[Robzilla1983]

I agree that you should take off days. Compound exercises tend to be the most effective, and remember, you don't get more fit from training, you get more fit from recovering. Taking time off to sleep and rest is super important if you want to see good progress.

That's interesting. I don't think I've heard that before. Or at least not that simplified. Care to elaborate more? I'd like to hear the science behind it.

I tend to do strength, cardio, off. Repeat.

[spezzy]

I agree that you should take off days. Compound exercises tend to be the most effective, and remember, you don't get more fit from training, you get more fit from recovering. Taking time off to sleep and rest is super important if you want to see good progress.

That's interesting. I don't think I've heard that before. Or at least not that simplified. Care to elaborate more? I'd like to hear the science behind it.

I tend to do strength, cardio, off. Repeat.

basically, when you're doing strength training, you're damaging your muscles.

on rest days, your muscles rebuild themselves.

only your muscles don't like being defeated, so given enough time, they rebuild themselves stronger, so that the next time you train you won't hurt them again.

work them out again too soon and you're only re-doing the damage you did the first workout.

[Dantes]

I agree that you should take off days. Compound exercises tend to be the most effective, and remember, you don't get more fit from training, you get more fit from recovering. Taking time off to sleep and rest is super important if you want to see good progress.

That's interesting. I don't think I've heard that before. Or at least not that simplified. Care to elaborate more? I'd like to hear the science behind it.

I tend to do strength, cardio, off. Repeat.

basically, when you're doing strength training, you're damaging your muscles.

on rest days, your muscles rebuild themselves.

only your muscles don't like being defeated, so given enough time, they rebuild themselves stronger, so that the next time you train you won't hurt them again.

work them out again too soon and you're only re-doing the damage you did the first workout.

There is some research that light days after a heavy day assists with blood-flow to the muscle group and hence recovery.

Ever seen the Bulgarian Olympic lifting routines? The Chinese? The Russian?

I'm not going to deny that some of them are on steroids but with the prevalence of drug testing at the olympics they're obviously not fully dosed up at the time they're competing.

Have a look at Chaos and Pain or Amped Training, they train heavy and they lift often. They also have a hell of a lot of variety and experience

http://chaosandpain.blogspot.com/

http://www.ampedtraining.com/posts

Note: I'm not denying that rest and recovery is important.

I just like to lift as often as I can and hence I tend towards lower rep/higher set workouts where I try not to hit exhaustion.

If I walk out with nothing left in the tank then of course I'm going to take a couple days off. If I walk out with a spring in my step feeling good I might go back again at night and do some supplemental work.

The point is that you can train every day if you want to but you have to gear your workouts and recovery cycles appropriately.

If your doing muscle hypertrophy to exhuastion stuff then you're most likely going to want a week off.

If you go in and do 10 sets of 3 with varying weights and plenty of recovery time then you may not need as much.

As a general rule of thumb for me personally.

The more reps I do in a set the more rest I need between workouts.

If I do a lot of low rep high set stuff with decent weight I'm okay to train again the next day

If I feel like utter crap I take time off.

If I'm feeling great I'll train twice a day and include a lighter session the next day to offset the increased volume.

What I'm trying to get across is that you can train every day but you have to do it intelligently and you have to be aware of what your body is telling you. Something I tend to completely miss when the adrenaline starts going.

Bit long and rambling but eh, I hope it gets my point across.

Oh and a side note,

If I was crushing as many reps in circuit form as Spezzy I would definitely be taking at least 48 hours off between workouts, I don't and so I lift more often.

[adam]

I definitely don't advocate just laying on the couch all day on days you aren't in the gym. Some sort of long slow distance like walking, hiking, whatever you like is definitely good to get some blood moving through you. That said, if you for example do a long bike ride the day after doing squats, your body is taking another hit in the quads and you're not going to see as good of progress as you might otherwise.

I've struggled with this in the past, but I'm trying to adopt a "minimum effort maximum return" style of training. Just being in the gym doesn't mean I'm getting more done. Only whether or not I'm hitting my performance goals (be they fat loss or strength gains) can tell me whether my training is effective.

Also, I don't have time to play Halo: Reach as it is, never mind adding 2 more days a week to the gym.

Here's my current schedule, if you're interested:

[spezzy]

As a general rule of thumb for me personally.

The more reps I do in a set the more rest I need between workouts.

If I do a lot of low rep high set stuff with decent weight I'm okay to train again the next day

If I feel like utter crap I take time off.

If I'm feeling great I'll train twice a day and include a lighter session the next day to offset the increased volume.

What I'm trying to get across is that you can train every day but you have to do it intelligently and you have to be aware of what your body is telling you. Something I tend to completely miss when the adrenaline starts going.

I think this is the most important part. Learn your body and learn to listen to it. I typically do active things (running, hiking, biking, yoga) on my "off" days, but from my experience with how my body works I know that I NEED to work on a day 1 push/day 2 pull/day 3 off schedule. Every once in a while, I feel fabulous, and skip an off day, or feel like crap, so I throw an extra one in there.

There have also been days where I've thought I didn't need an off day, so I went in and ended up declaring defeat 10 minutes later. I'd rather admit that I was wrong about not needing an off day than push through it and end up hurting myself.

[Dantes]

Learn your body and learn to listen to it. I typically do active things (running, hiking, biking, yoga) on my "off" days, but from my experience with how my body works I know that I NEED to work on a day 1 push/day 2 pull/day 3 off schedule. Every once in a while, I feel fabulous, and skip an off day, or feel like crap, so I throw an extra one in there.

There have also been days where I've thought I didn't need an off day, so I went in and ended up declaring defeat 10 minutes later. I'd rather admit that I was wrong about not needing an off day than push through it and end up hurting myself.

I agree.

At the moment I'm just doing a push, a pull, a squat and a deadlift as "main" workouts three times a week. Then I do supplemental crap in between.

Olympic Snatches, Clean and Jerks, BTN Push Presses, Extra DL, Extra Squats, Sprints, Power cleans, Press Ups etc etc.

In all honesty I have a "tolerance" of 20-30% where I'm ok mentally to be in a workout. E.g. I can overdo what I planned by 30%. Any more and I'll injure myself (did about 60% the other week). If I'm feeling crap I'm also ok with just leaving it there. The hardest part is definitely knowing where the 30% over is though.