Consecutive days in a row

SpAcEd OuT

Just wondering if working on the same muscles 2 days in a row is bad for your muscle? Heard off someone that working on the same muscle 2 days in a row actually decreases the muscle because you tear muscle when you workout and when it repairs it comes back bigger but if you do weights 2 days in a row you just tear already torn muscle and it comes back smaller basically it sounds like bull**** and was just posting here for confirmation, I usually go the gym every 2 days but some days after a big workout 48hours prior I find myself unable to do as much and the only thing i can think of is my muscle hasnt repaired fully and then I wonder if I am doing more damage than good.

Thanks

ronbyrne2005

depends on what you want to achieve. if you wanna get bigger never train on consecutive days,ideally only train each body part once a week if aiming for maximum muscle growth. your muscle wont get smaller or be damaged by two days consecutive exercises on same muscle but you wont get bigger or stronger and will take longer to recover.

g'em

As a general rule you shouldn't workout the same muscle group two days in a row. Muscle gets bigger during rest periods- as you said when yopu workout the muscle fibres get torn when liting and during the rest they get repaired and grow. So if you work two days consecutively you're not giving the body time to repair and you're increasing your risk of injury.

Most experienced lifters would also only train each body part only once a week, to really ensure that its good to go for each session. This has been talked about more on another thread...
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=50634475&postcount=15

base2

Yeah its a bad thing to do. At the very least I would say 3 days rest before hitting the same area. I used to train like that when I was younger, doing pressups and weights every day. It just made me have very small, hard muscles and the ability to do 60 pressups in a minute.

Question thought for the rest of you. If I train my legs hard one day will a cardio workout the day after be bad for me. And this would be crosstraing/jogging 25 minutes.

ronbyrne2005

i think a bit of cardio the day after heavy legs session can aid recovery as more blood is pumped into the muscles,also the muscle fibres you use when running arent same as those for heavy weight training.but if your recovery is delayed because of cardio day after weights then dont do it.

Dragan

To the legs question, running and lifting are using two completely different muscle fibres, so you will be fine for a bit of a run after leg day, obviously just don't over do it!

As for the OP, it depends entirely on what sort of training you are doing. In most gyms, most people are training like bodybuilders, yet they don't eat, rest or have the genetics for it. So why do they do it? Why waste all that time doing something that does not benefit them?

Then i know guys who train two days on, one day off, they do circuits for the upper body for two days, a days rest, then two circuits for the lower body, a day off. The weights, excercises and rep ranges with vary between each day, they do a lot of cardio and a lot of conditioning and guess what.

They are exactly the same size, if not bigger than the other folks, and are in much better nick.

I guess what i'm trying to say is that people respond differently to different things, but very few people try enough different types of excercise to really find something that suits, so they do what they guy next to them is doing.

Of course you can try working out the same body part for two days in a row. Have the first day heavy and intense, the second day lighter and shorter. EVERYTHING will work, to an extent, once it is done with a bit of cop on.

On the other hand, if you want to be a bodybuilder, i would not recommend it, as that style and intensity of training is not suited to such a workout style.