Soreness after working out

[TheHoss]

what was bad about my advice?

[skunkworks]

TheHoss,

Compound exercises that involve multiple joints and multiple muscle groups are the best way to build strength. These compound movements (squat, deadlift, bench, press) recruit more muscle and they do it more efficiently than if you broke each body part down to an isolated exercise.

The point of exercise is to put controlled amounts of stress on your body to force it to adapt by increasing its neuromuscular efficiency and muscle mass. Putting way too much stress is bad as that leads to overtraining. Putting too little stress will result in slower gains that eventually top out. As a beginner, the OP is most likely not even close to overtraining and should not be concerned about some lingering soreness between workouts.

[Jiggymike]

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I don't lift as much as I used to but my friend who works out frequently says it is bad to work out a sore muscle group. Just wait a day or 2 and do it again. He said your 'fast-twitch fibers' will not react correctly when they are sore.

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I thought he said he was going to work out 2 days in a row while sore but just reread OP and he said "Monday." Agree with Skunk that you should be fine after taking Tuesday off. SKunk, how woud you feel about working out 2 days in a row?

[Five-Star]

Why doesn't he just eat a banana?

[skunkworks]

[ QUOTE ]
I thought he said he was going to work out 2 days in a row while sore but just reread OP and he said "Monday." Agree with Skunk that you should be fine after taking Tuesday off. SKunk, how woud you feel about working out 2 days in a row?

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In general it's not the worst thing in the world, but you really should give your body that rest it needs to adapt. If you continually overload your muscles without giving yourself proper rest, your body might not be able to withstand the workload and lose its ability to recover. This is the point at which you have "overtrained" which may require weeks of deloading to give your body a chance to catch its breath.

The other thing you have to be worried about is that after a workout, your muscles will not perform well until they've fully adapted (which takes 48-72 hours). If you keep trying to throw around the same weight when your muscles are fatigued and not fully recovered, you're increasing the likelihood that you'll suffer an injury during a workout. IMO, bad form and pushing your body too hard are the two best ways to injure yourself.

[TheHoss]

Everything I have heard from professional (and amateur) bodybuilders and fitness trainers says that your body cannot recuperate properly working multiple major muscle groups in the same session, assuming you are working at an adequate intensity level. The exceptions being if you have incredible genetics or are on roids.

Normally I would not try to argue this with you as you seem to know what you're talking about. But frankly it goes completely against everything I've read, particularly at bodybuilding.com which is somewhat of the internet bible to working out. Also in my own experience training, I know that my body could not handle working so many major muscle groups in one session. And while I am certainly not the biggest or most ripped guy out there, I do pretty well for myself.

It also just occurred to me that there could possibly be a difference for practical strength training as opposed to bodybuilding? I dunno.

[skunkworks]

TheHoss,

Your body can recuperate working multiple major muscle groups just fine. If you go look at bodybuilding.com's forums, you'll see writeups for many different training programs, many of which work multiple major muscle groups in the same session. I've always pimped Rippetoe's Starting Strength program -- I first discovered it on the bb.com forums.

Anyway, things change when you become an intermediate lifter. At this point, linear progression (adding weight incrementally) may not be enough to improve gains, and the amount of weight you're lifting may be too much for your body to recover from in 48-72 hours. That recovery period may now be a week, which is why you start varying intensity by having light days and heavy days. This is called periodization, and it's the next step once you've used up all of your beginner gains and recovery starts taking longer and longer. Maybe this is what you're thinking of when you say that working multiple muscle groups at the right intensity is too much?

Also, there is a difference between practical strength training and bodybuilding -- you'll see a lot more isolated exercises in bodybuilding. I think that might be why you see more splits in bodybuilder programs.

[cbloom]

The practical reason why you don't do lots of different muscle groups in the same day is just that it's difficult to do a full-intensity workout for all your major muscles in one session once you're a heavy lifter. Just your leg workout should be so heavy it will zap all your short term energy stores and you wouldn't be able to do a proper upper body workout on the same day. When you're still lifting light that isn't a problem and you can do it all on the same day if you want.

When I was heavy lifting, squats & dead lifts would be one day by itself and the goal was to do it hard enough so that you are ready to pass out or puke at the end of the workout - not exactly the ideal state to start doing bench presses.

[cbloom]

Just read some Rippetoe stuff - that looks really good, get that book OP. Also, the bodybuilding forums look really good and all this stuff should really be there.

[skunkworks]

cbloom,

Do we agree that close to 99% of the people reading this thread are not lifting heavy enough to warrant having a day only for legs, etc.?