I've always been under the impression that waiting 3 days between heavy workouts on a given muscle group is ideal, but if someone was to work this muscle group out, let's say, every day and a half, would this be beneficial or somewhat pointless?

 

when I was on the swimteam...we used to swim for 5 hours a day..and lifted wieghts every other day (MWF)...I used to be super sore everyday, in the locker room we'd have a big Costco size bottle of asprin just chillin there waiting for us...but we got pretty ripped from torturing our bodies like that..so ya..if you can handle it..do a hard workout every other day and you'll be fine...just let your muscles regenerate after a day..waiting 3 days might be a little too much time cuz I dunno about you..but if I stop for 3 days and I go back...I can feel myself out of shape already...

 

go to menshealth.com or mensfitness.com

I don't remember where but on that website they have an expert (he certainly sounds like an expert) who says it takes 3 days. Really informative reading - you just have to look around.

(sorry I'm too lazy to look now. I read it about 3 months ago).

 

Well as it is right now I'm going to the gym every 3 out of 4 days (Chest/Triceps day 1, Shoulders/Neck Day 2, Upper Back, Biceps Day 3, with abs & lower back alternating every visit, and legs every visit), I swim 2 days a week at my swimming class at college and I have Shaolin Kempo classes 4 days a week.

I do light workouts in the morning at home but I was thinking of making these a little more intense. That's what this thread was for.


How was the swim team? It's something I've been thinking about doing.

 

The vast majority of people training for increased muscle size overtrain. Unless your taking steroids following the routines found in most muscle mags will lead you toward an overtrained state in no time.

It's commonly recommended that you should at least do a split system where you train each body part no more than twice a week and some people experience even faster gains in size from training a body part no more than once a week or twice every week and a half.

It really depends on your body type, training regimen, diet and lifestyle. Even if you are taking steroids (no implication intended) you can still overtrain. There are quite a few national level champion bodybuilders in the region where I live and a lot of them train only 20 minutes at a time.

Just experiment and look for the signs of overtraining some of which can be ...

Elevated resting pulse rate in the morning
Reduced appetite
Lack of interest in training
Diarrhea
A flat (non full) appearance to your muscles
Losing your 'pump' during training
etc

Listen to your body. I believe it's called instinctive training.

You'll soon know if you're overdoing it. Above all don't take it too seriously

 

if you wanna get in shape and ripped in a relatively short time...take up competitive swimming...thats all I have to say..I recently graduated from HS and I swam all 4 years, every morning we'd have practice from 6am to 730am and we'd swim roughly 2000+yards (25yard pool) Then in the afternoon from 3pm to 530 and on Tuesday/Thursday (sorry about writing MWF on my previous post)we'd have weight training after practice till whenever you finished your workout (afternoon swim would cover 7000 yards and the WT workouts would cover everything from upperbody to lower body w/ incline/bench press, leg press, shoulder press, leg lifts, situps, pullups, tricep workouts, calf workouts..you name it..there was 2 types of WT workouts we'd do..and we would switch back and forth every other day with them...) The wieght training workouts were geared towards endurance though..they werent for building bulk so we used relatively light weights (ex I weight 135lbs, bench 2 sets of 15reps w/ 135lbs)...but yea, I know this sounds kinda gay, but go find a swimming mag or a picture of a olympic swimmer and you'll see that they're all ripped like crazy
*also telling girls your a swimmer is a hook that works quite well

 

it all depends on how much rest you get