Weight lifting everyday?

Discussion in 'Health and Fitness' started by AndrewTheAndroid, Nov 29, 2016.

  1. AndrewTheAndroid

    AndrewTheAndroid A hero for fun.

    I was told that you should rest between workout days if you are doing full body sessions. However I continually see people working out for hours a day every day. I don't get it. Are they going 50-60% or something? What does that kind of regiment even look like? I am curious because I have a vacation coming up and I want to get stronger.
     
  2. Van Zandt

    Van Zandt Mr. High Kick

    A properly structured strength training programme will have you in the gym for the least amount of time necessary to make progress. The only people who have a need to clock anything close to the amount of volume you're talking about are professional body builders, but even they will (or should) adhere to the rules of rest and periodisation. People who claim to spend hours every day in the gym are: a) lying, b) on steroids, c) doing ineffective training, or d) a combination of a-c.
     
  3. Ero-Sennin

    Ero-Sennin Well-Known Member Supporter

    You can get close to weight training every day by splitting up body parts that you train. This will include focused sessions on body parts that often go ignored, such as fore arms and calves. So an example would be:

    Mon: Squats
    Tues: Shoulders/Forearms
    Wed: Lats/Calves
    Thurs: Chest/Triceps
    Fri: Rest
    Sat: Deadlifts/Biceps
    Sun: Forearms/Calves

    Mon: Rest
    Tues: begin repeat of routine

    It'll give you a bit of a rolling schedule that needs to be adapted to how your body is feeling as well. Your chest might not feel up to working out on the scheduled day but your biceps and shoulders feel great, etc.. You have to have a real good feel for your body and what it can do, which takes a lot of time and focus to learn.

    Generally though, gym sessions with weights should only be 30-45 minutes long. It takes around 10 days I believe (need source for this, but it's generally what I go by) for your body to start adapting to not doing anything, meaning they'll adapt by getting weaker/smaller. That gives you a large window of play to rest between sets.

    If your goal is to get stronger, you could always pick a couple of exercises that you want to get stronger at and keep the reps really low, but the frequency of those lifts high throughout the week. So if you wanted to get good at bench pressing for example, doing 5-6 sets of 2/3 reps 3-4 times a week will be beneficial, but you're not going to "feel" like you're working out hard, and you'll need a two day rest period in there somewhere.

    People who spend all day in the gym are as Van Zandt said. Steroids, minimal gains, or lying. I increased my bench press over the last two months from doing 5x5 from sets of 175lbs to 225lbs doing one or two bench press sessions per week (this is on top of messed up shoulders and never really doing bench press throughout the years). That's a 50 lb gain for a smaller muscle group. The true number for a set of 5, given the way I feel and my experience with weightlifting would probably be a grueling set of 5 with 245-250 lbs, which makes it a 75-80 lb gain in one lift. That's all I would do for the day as well, just a 5x5 set for bench press.

    You could probably get away with working out at 30-40% everyday, but you're not going to make any gains worth a hoot : P.
     

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