Sgt Baldwin wrote:
For weights, would you recommend the same? One day one, one day off?
Absolutely!
Your muscles need time to recover. You know the old saying "tearing down your muscles" and you need the rest to "repair and recover and grow" etc.
(Well if you haven't heard this saying- I just told it to you
).
Anyway there used to be a lot of debate and confusion of what this meant. What this saying was refering to is that "soreness" you experience a day or two after a hard workout that usually lasts a day.
There was much talk about it being "lactic acid buildup" in your muscles. I never really understood how that worked. Only that you needed to drink a lot of water.
Well... modern study has shown that it is NOT lactic acid buildup. What it is is
micro-tearing of your muscle tissue in the muscle you worked out. The old saying of "tearing down your muscles" is actually true!
So you need a day off in between workouts for repair and recovery. Put simply your body repairs those micro muscle tears, and builds new muscle fibers- this is why you grow from working out.
So talking about "overtraining" like I was mentioning earlier- if you are constantly "breaking down muscle tissue" without giving it adequate time to recover, those micro tears can add up leading to a "much larger" tear. This could severely hamper your workouts (not to mention a muscle tear hurts like hell).
Also the harder the workout you do- the more days of rest in between you need before hitting that particular bodypart again.
To use myself as an example: I always train heavy. 10 reps is bullshit to me. I've done high reps, 10 reps blah blah blah. It doesn't work for me. The only thing my muscles respond best to is
heavy weights. We're talking something so heavy I can only do 6 reps and sometimes so heavy I can only do 2 or 3 reps at best. So my workouts are intense.
I only train three days a week with one day off between each workout. But I only train one or two bodyparts per workout. For instance-
Monday- Chest and Arms
Wednesday- Back
Friday- Shoulders
Tuesday, Thursday and the weekend off.
Not only is there a day or two in between each workout, but there is an
entire week before I work the same body part again!
This gives that bodypart (such as my chest)
plenty of time to recover. Now if I find that my chest is lagging, I'll just add more sets to my single chest workout rather than working my chest twice a week or more.
When I was in my twenties I could train three days on one day off (meaning every bodypart was worked at least twice a week). I can't do that anymore now that I'm in my forties.
Kevin
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That's 28lbs lost since June. Only a few more pounds until I reach my final target. I'm thinking I'm going to stay there until at least the New Year and then maybe see about loosing some more. I'm still feeling a bit tubby around the middle (tho I do have to remind myself I've had two kids, lol).
I'm in two minds about doing P90 (or even P90X). To be honest, I'm not sure I have the commitment to do it everyday but I feel that if I don't commit 100% then I won't see the results I want and I'll get disheartened. Kind of a catch 22.
