Workout Confusion

[Hermes3X]

Ok, so my question is this,

back when I was doing a little bit of weight lifting, I was told to never work the same muscle group within 48 hours. however now that I'm doing kung fu, I hear how we need to do the same workouts seven days a week. Can anyone resolve this for me? I usually feel like I can work out all the time (especially after a good night's sleep) but I don't want to kill myself.

[Ford Prefect]

Depends on the intensity (this is measured by % of your 1RM and not by how it "feels") and volume of the work. The higher of each, then the more you rest you need. Bodybuilders do very high volume and work with moderate intensity. This is why they need to rest so long between workouts. Kung fu practice, while tiring, is very low intensity. That's why you can do it every day.

[Hermes3X]

Originally posted by Ford Prefect
Depends on the intensity (this is measured by % of your 1RM and not by how it "feels") and volume of the work. The higher of each, then the more you rest you need. Bodybuilders do very high volume and work with moderate intensity. This is why they need to rest so long between workouts. Kung fu practice, while tiring, is very low intensity. That's why you can do it every day.

Ford Prefect,
I'm sorry, does 1RM refer to your resting Pulse? To determine intensity do I need to use the formula 225 - your age equals your ceiling pulse and 85% of that number is your focus?

h3x

[Ford Prefect]

Nope. 1RM is your 1 rep max in a certain lift, or in other words, with how much weight you do something once. For instance, if you were bench pressing and you could only lift 225 lbs once, then that is your 1RM. Think of it as the intensity (ie strength) of a muscle contraction. Kung Fu, swimming, jogging, or anything you can do for a long time obviously has very low intensity contractions.

[Hermes3X]

ahhhhhhhhhhhh!

[morbicid]

although, in theory, anything that physically stresses the body acts as an obstacle to muscle growth/ recovery. isn't that why some bodybuilders do as little physical activity as possible in between workouts? just toying with the idea :) i'm no expert myself

[IronFist]

If you don't want to get terribly scientific about it, tho, the general rule is if your muscles are sore, don't work them out until they're better again. That's a general rule and there are a lot of exceptions to it, but it's good for beginners.

Anyway, what Ford said is right. The "don't lift weights more than every 48 hours" comes from certain bodybuilding practices. For some reason, everyone associates weight lifting with bodybuilding. There are a lot of ways to lift weights for purposes other than bodybuilding that have completely different programs.

Look at it like this: Assuming you're already in pretty good shape, if you did 10 pushups today, you'd be fine tomorrow and could do 10 pushups tomorrow, too, right? But now if you did 1,000 pushups today, you'd probably be pretty sore tomorrow, right? So it's all (for the most part) based on the intensity of your workouts.

[IronFist]

Originally posted by morbicid
although, in theory, anything that physically stresses the body acts as an obstacle to muscle growth/ recovery. isn't that why some bodybuilders do as little physical activity as possible in between workouts?

They usually do little to conserve calories. Doing stuff burns calories, which is not conducive to growth. There's a saying in bodybuilding: Don't run if you can walk, don't walk if you can stand, don't stand if you can sit, and if you can sit you might as well lay down and take a nap.

Now, I've never actually heard anyone say that, but I've seen it mentioned on websites before. The point is, I think it helps explain why some of them don't do much between workouts.