Is it okay to weight train sore muscles ? I trained my entire upper body yesterday at a high intensity, I'm pretty sore today and I was wondering if I could train again. I know your supposed to train only a certain muscle group a day but it is easier for me to train my whole upper body and just hit it as hard as I can, will this stunt muscle growth ? Will I have to take more protein ?
Weight training with sore muscles ?
- Thread starter candleman
- Start date
Training sore isn't a bad thing. It just means your muscles are unused to the amount of work they're doing. HOWEVER, going hard on training the same muscles without a day or two in between IS bad. If you don't give your muscles time to recover and build up between training sessions, you'll see slowed gains and start getting injured.
Maybe do leg day in between.
Maybe do leg day in between.
Muscle soreness of DOMS are a part of weight training, it will lessen as your body gets used to regular exercise.
If muscles gain is your main objective then you have to realise rest is a big part of gaining mass. If you must workout on consecutive days then do a lower body day after doing an upper body day. Working over the same muscles over and over again without rest will only hamper your attempts to gain muscle and strength.
If muscles gain is your main objective then you have to realise rest is a big part of gaining mass. If you must workout on consecutive days then do a lower body day after doing an upper body day. Working over the same muscles over and over again without rest will only hamper your attempts to gain muscle and strength.
I totally agree in the second paragraph of Kitsch's post, but there are a fundamental flaw to the first.
DOMS Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness is when you don't start aching at the time you should, usually the next day, but a day or so later. This is when you have trained at a level where the muscle repair is not advanced enough for you to be aching at the normal time and can happen to the most seasoned of professionals or the greenest newbie. If you change your training or have a particularly insane day and push yourself well over the top you are more at risk of DOMS.
It takes more to get DOMS if you are used to training but it happens. I haven't had full DOMS from training this year, got close where I was aching more on day 2 than day 1 but that isn't DOMS because the onset was on time. Last year however I helped out with some physical tasks for work and that didn't effect me in a number of areas the following day but a day later they were killing me.
True DOMS should be a sign for beginners that they have gone too far. Insanity like that requires familiarity, and beginners should be more focussed on technique than full on intensity.
DOMS Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness is when you don't start aching at the time you should, usually the next day, but a day or so later. This is when you have trained at a level where the muscle repair is not advanced enough for you to be aching at the normal time and can happen to the most seasoned of professionals or the greenest newbie. If you change your training or have a particularly insane day and push yourself well over the top you are more at risk of DOMS.
It takes more to get DOMS if you are used to training but it happens. I haven't had full DOMS from training this year, got close where I was aching more on day 2 than day 1 but that isn't DOMS because the onset was on time. Last year however I helped out with some physical tasks for work and that didn't effect me in a number of areas the following day but a day later they were killing me.
True DOMS should be a sign for beginners that they have gone too far. Insanity like that requires familiarity, and beginners should be more focussed on technique than full on intensity.
Crazy Old Man either you are lucky or I am unlucky because I still get mild DOMS after several years of training. I have DOMS now from doing squats yesterday and I know it will be worse tomorrow.
Now it's nothing like the DOMS I had as a beginner when I could bare walk and my knees would buckle when I walked down the road because my legs were so tired but I still get mild soreness which is worse on the second day which for me I would classify as DOMS.
Now it's nothing like the DOMS I had as a beginner when I could bare walk and my knees would buckle when I walked down the road because my legs were so tired but I still get mild soreness which is worse on the second day which for me I would classify as DOMS.
If you are aching today from yesterday that is correct onset not delayed. Aching more the day after is what the less sane of us call normal. There is something deeply wrong with that fact of course but I don't consider I worked hard enough if I am totally mobile the next day.
Does that mean 18 year olds don't train as hard as 35 year olds then?
I have to defend the old folk here. Last gym I trained at before training purely at home was a uni gym and there were lots of late teens early twenties questioning how the obviously senior member was doing the stuff I can. A few decades of practice being insane goes a long way, in fact I reckon it will lead me to a few more decades of the same.
Age means nothing, I'm 67 and still as stupid as the day I was 18.
If I don't feel muscle soreness after training, I feel I haven't trained hard enough.
I feel the important thing is to not let your muscles seize up. I did a good session on my quads and within 24 hours the stiffness started.
Last night I did some light squads using suspension straps at about 45 degress so my full weight was not on my legs followed by stretching.
Today not too bad.
Poida
Poida's onto something here.
While it's not all that clear why this is the case, the more frequently you go through a movement, the less sore you get from it. I've generally observed that those who train a muscle once a week are always sore, and for many (far from all, but a large enough proportion to not be total outliers), this is true regardless of how hard they train in a given. That was certainly the case when I moved from full-body to splits for the first time: constant soreness. I had been taught that if you're still sore, then you're not ready to train again, so I progressively kept on spreading my bodyparts further apart while training, and kept getting sorer for longer. Some experience what I've experienced in that regard, others stop getting sore from a certain workout plan within a couple weeks regardless of frequency.
Right up the other end of the spectrum, I've found for myself that if I do fullbody 3x/wk after a layoff, I'll be brutally sore for the first week, then, after the first workout of the second, I'll barely feel any soreness at all, and this will continue to be the case for the life of the program. Right now I'm being completely stupid and squatting 6 days in a row (which I do NOT recommend outside of specific circumstances, and inside those specific circumstances, I still don't recommend it so much as acknowledge it as a possibility). I had some vague soreness this morning, on Day 3, but it was actually from cramping my hamstring outside of actual squats. The squats themselves are leaving me totally unsore at this frequency, whereas if I had done Monday's workout and then not trained my legs for the last 2 days, I'd probably still be a bit sore.
EDIT: In saying all this, and bringing it all back to the original post, what I'm doing right now is not a bodybuilding plan. I can't remember the details, but I have seen some evidence that if you take a certain total weekly volume of training for a muscle group and fit that entire volume into 1 session, the hypertrophic results will likely be greater than if you spread that volume out throughout the week. So, say I do 3x10 bench press on Mon/Wed/Fri, or I do 9x10 bench press on Mon, I'd likely build more chest, shoulder and triceps muscle mass in the latter scenario than the former.
While it's not all that clear why this is the case, the more frequently you go through a movement, the less sore you get from it. I've generally observed that those who train a muscle once a week are always sore, and for many (far from all, but a large enough proportion to not be total outliers), this is true regardless of how hard they train in a given. That was certainly the case when I moved from full-body to splits for the first time: constant soreness. I had been taught that if you're still sore, then you're not ready to train again, so I progressively kept on spreading my bodyparts further apart while training, and kept getting sorer for longer. Some experience what I've experienced in that regard, others stop getting sore from a certain workout plan within a couple weeks regardless of frequency.
Right up the other end of the spectrum, I've found for myself that if I do fullbody 3x/wk after a layoff, I'll be brutally sore for the first week, then, after the first workout of the second, I'll barely feel any soreness at all, and this will continue to be the case for the life of the program. Right now I'm being completely stupid and squatting 6 days in a row (which I do NOT recommend outside of specific circumstances, and inside those specific circumstances, I still don't recommend it so much as acknowledge it as a possibility). I had some vague soreness this morning, on Day 3, but it was actually from cramping my hamstring outside of actual squats. The squats themselves are leaving me totally unsore at this frequency, whereas if I had done Monday's workout and then not trained my legs for the last 2 days, I'd probably still be a bit sore.
EDIT: In saying all this, and bringing it all back to the original post, what I'm doing right now is not a bodybuilding plan. I can't remember the details, but I have seen some evidence that if you take a certain total weekly volume of training for a muscle group and fit that entire volume into 1 session, the hypertrophic results will likely be greater than if you spread that volume out throughout the week. So, say I do 3x10 bench press on Mon/Wed/Fri, or I do 9x10 bench press on Mon, I'd likely build more chest, shoulder and triceps muscle mass in the latter scenario than the former.
Last edited: