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Free weights questions
A few weeks ago I started doing ab work every morning. Now I want to incorporate free weights for my chest/arms. Today I did small sets (15 reps) of chest presses, bicep curls, tricep dips, and shoulder raises.
My question is: Can I do these every day or should I alternate days? It is such a small number of reps, but should I let my muscles rest in between?
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Posted 2/10/09 9:03 AM  |
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Long Island Weddings
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azoodie
Member since 8/05 8377 total posts
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Team SEXY BACK
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Re: Free weights questions
I always give my muscles 48 hours after strength training. I would split up the muscle groups and do M/Th and Tue/Fri or something like that.
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| Posted 2/10/09 3:26 PM |
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SummerMom
Now a mom of 2!
Member since 6/07 4970 total posts
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Re: Free weights questions
Posted by glinda-goodwitch
My question is: Can I do these every day or should I alternate days? It is such a small number of reps, but should I let my muscles rest in between?
First of all, don't worry that it's a "small number of reps." 15 is fine, perfect, as long as your muscle is so fatigued on the 15th rep that you couldn't possibly do a 16th. That's how you know you're done. 15 is a pretty arbitrary number - there's no reason to stop there, and no reason to feel like you failed if you only did 12. If you reached muscle failure in 6-15 reps, you are making that muscle stronger.
As for the rest... you need 48 hours of rest. What happens is, when you work out a muscle, you create micro-tears. Your muscle then re-builds, and re-builds stronger. If you do bicep curls on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, you are tearing the muscle, then tearing it again, and then tearing it again, and it never rebuilds stronger. I hope I'm making sense.
So your options are: do complementary muscles on consecutive days (biceps, back, and shoulders on Monday; Triceps, chest, and legs on Tuesday. Or - sometimes I would do upper body on Monday and lower body on Tuesday), or do ALL your muscles and skip at least a day in between.
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| Posted 2/10/09 3:57 PM |
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