Why aren't you supposed to lift weights every day? page 2

[tfarny]

High-level athletes do train every day, but they don't train to utter exhaustion every session. The amount of rest you need and benefit from will depend on your genes and current fitness level. Personally I seem to do best with 72 hrs rest between hard weight sessions, which doesn't tell you anything about how much rest you personally will benefit from.

[Primal Fist]

It's only dependent on the weight and your strength level. I imagine I could squat 40kg for 5x5 every day for a year. Make it 100kg and there'd be some problems. The more you lift relative to your strength, the more recovery time you need - for both your muscles and your CNS.

[nachobrawler]

As many others have already stated in this thread...you grow when you rest. Not when you lift. Lifting is catabolic-i.e. it breaks down muscle tissue. The body will become anabolic i.e. building muscle...IF and only IF you have "fed" it right. That means proper nutrition (especially protein in relation to your workouts) good sleep and rest and a non-stress environment all play a role in making one anabolic.

So, if you overwork your body....ie stress it out...from too much heavy lifting 6 days a week (or whatever you were considering) you never give it a chance or the right environment to build muscle.And you are continually breaking down the muscles from your lifting. So, you become catabolic and you wont build muscle, get bigger or become stronger. You will basically breakdown and either get injured or sick or lose your motivation altogether. Or all of the above.


And everyone else is 100% right. You cannot compare farming or working in a warehouse to a heavy weight training session. They are two totally different beasts.

[Thor Falk]

It's only dependent on the weight and your strength level. I imagine I could squat 40kg for 5x5 every day for a year. Make it 100kg and there'd be some problems. The more you lift relative to your strength, the more recovery time you need - for both your muscles and your CNS.

why would you want to squat 40kg every day? this is the weight lifting equivalent of chronic cardio

[Primal Fist]

why would you want to squat 40kg every day? this is the weight lifting equivalent of chronic cardio

Yes.... did you read the thread? Of course I wouldn't want to do that. I'm using it to make a point about recovery being dependent on weight.

[racingsnake]

When I come out of the gym I have trouble holding my phone to my ear, never mind lifting a sack of animal feed. As someone said, apples and oranges.

[Owly]

My partner does furniture delivery, and I can assure you that carrying furniture is not the same as lifting--most sofas don't weigh nearly what he can lift at the gym (or most appliances, for that matter). Is he strong from his work? Yes. But if he wants to build beyond that, he still has to lift more, the same as the rest of us.

One big difference for him is that he can hit the gym and still lift those lighter loads during the day, because for an adapted body, lifting a table is a pretty minor thing. But he still needs rest days between heavy sessions.

[Kaeden]

Squat 5x5 two consecutive days at an adaptive load and see how you feel. If you aren’t dead you are a beginner lifting just the bar or a genetic freak and should join a professional sport.

[Anivair]

How does this apply to bodyweight movements? This month i'm doing push ups every day at my office. I'd say that I do 60-70 per day broken up into sets of 10 over the course of 8 hours. is that okay? Am I wasting my time? Most of them are incline, but by the end of the month, i'm hoping to be doing most of them as standard push ups (which i'm bad at). Should I be taking days off with a load that light?

[gordo]

The basic way to get strong is to hammer yourself flat, and then rest. Much better to do 140 pushups every other day than 70 every day.

Gordo