Should I work out everyday? or take a break?!


Question:

Should I work out everyday? or take a break?

I do what is known as circuit training. Meaning I exercise every part of my body when I work out (weight lifting) but I always switch up the exercises so that my muscles can go throught variation.

However, right now, I am working out everyday. I hear a lot of people saying that if I do work out, I should have "off-days" for certain muscles and work on other muscles. However, with circuit training, I'm working every muscle. Is this bad? Some people told me that I should take a day off to recover. But my body is never sore (even though I lift as much as I can). So do I still need a recovery period???


Answers:

The thing with working every muscle group in one day is that by the end of the workout (despite what you may feel), you're not going to be giving it your all. Even if you think you're lifting all you can on (for example) your tricep exercises, you won't really be lifting their maximum when they're already tired from being used in your bench presses. Even if you're working only one muscle group a day, you're muscles will be used more in the first exercises than in the final ones. Coupled with the loss of energy from other exercises, it becomes more effecient if you split your workout up over the week as you'll have more energy to really push them.

Resting is important because muscles do not grow in the gym, but rather when you're resting. It doesn't matter if you're sore or not, you need to let your muscles grow and recover for Hypertrophy to begin. Muscles don't tear and rebuild stronger as the common myth will have you believe, but rather the process has more to do with chemicals and hormones, which is why nutrition is also important. Without rest you're really trying to build muscle without any resources, which limits results and causes overtraining to occur.

Also, you're putting a load on your ligaments, tendons and bones (which are not heavily vascularized compared to muscles), meaning they can take longer to recover. So injury can become more common, and another limiting factor (aside from fatigue and muscle recovery) is introduced as your body won't have time to repair supporting tissues around joints and bones. Either way you'll reach a plateau and decline, so taking a day off between sessions is worth it.

Circuit training is geared more for say, 30 minutes at Curves than actual weight-lifting for strength or size. So if you are doing the type of circuit training that relies more on high rep low weights (more like cardio, which doesn't put a great deal of stress on your skeleton or muscles) you shouldn't need to rest as long, but be aware that overtraining still can occur in runners and other athletes.




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