Weights at the gym- how many days rest do you need?

Rest: The less you have the better, however many days of rest you take your body will adapt, after 2-4 weeks of training every day you will feel better for it and laugh at people saying you will need at least 48 hours or whatever other rubbish experts say.
The best athletes train hard, every day.
The strongest guys train hard, most days, and some every day depending on their sport. Weightlifters train heavy every day multiple times a day even, top strongmen train 4-5 days a week or so, again heavy.

The initial achiness is neither here nor there my friend, ignore it. Best thing for it? Exercise those bodyparts again, sends blood to those areas and increases the recovery rate. At some point you will just stop getting sore though, unless you introduce a new stimulus or exercise. DOMS as it is scientifically called is inconsequential to actual progress, being able to train again or not, etc, unless its impeding your technique or something like that, but that is rare.

Things like legs (read: squats) are optimally trained every day, smaller muscles like arms and chest every couple, shoulders and back can be nailed every day in some form or other, but not at maximum level like squats.

As a novice my best advice would be to train squats, deadlifts, overhead press, bench press, pullups and NOTHING else. High volume, train as often as you like, learn the lifts, and you will get stronger. All the rest of the exercises are unnecessary to you at this point, and usually only to sort out imbalances or serious weaknesses (genetic or otherwise), and even if you do have those, you won't know about them until well down the line usually. Examples being, if you are hypermobile in your joints, suffer from subluxation in the shoulders.

Feel free to PM me for you to send me money and I could help you with your training. OK, you don't have to send me money, but I can still help you with your training if you're serious!

 

Actually, all the most prominent beginner strength training programs advocate training alot less than this.

Programs like starting strength, and the subsequent programs in 'Practical Programming' advocate rest periods of up to 6 days between repeating high volume sessions on a lift.

Check out
http://www.stronglifts.com for some simply answers

Try getting hold of a copy of starting strength or 'Science and Practice of Strength Training' by Zatiorsky to help you understand.

The thing about athletes training every day (in lifting) is that they also have top nutritionists and have the shady area of checmical enhancement, which is rarely confirmed or sufficiently denied.

 

thats a whole lot of rubbish if i ever heard any , if you listen to this cAT YOU WILL OVER TRAIN , meaning a loss of muscle tussue ,fatigue , and diminished drive , periodize your workouts , this means separation , for large muscle groups chest ,back shoulders ,legs i recomend 72 hours between workouts , minimum , this is also dependent on number of sets you do , ex. i do 22 sets for large muscle groups and 12 for small (biceps,triceps ect) in order to make gains you must give your muscles ample time to heal and grow so 72 hours minimum , if you wanna hit it hard try making a four workout routine ex. chest/tricep, back/bicep,shoulder/trap, and legs , do all four in order then simply repeat , go to www.bodybuilding.com/articles there is a waelth of knowledge , now remember you will never grow unless you have proper nutrition , you need 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight a day at
least, try to do this in 5-7 small meals a day , dont forget also post workout nutrition ,all this you can find on the website, good luck

 

This is also a bodybuilding type routine, which differs greatly from strength training routines.

OP, what are your goals? This will largely determine the training program you should be doing.

 

Nobody is going to read that Zatiorsky text, its very indepth and not particularly suited to guys just starting.

Stronglifts is...very...basic... You won't get particularly strong doing that program. Its a starting point but you can do better.

Starting Strength is ok but again not what I would do, 5x5 gets old quickly and when you're a beginner there should be no pressure to hit numbers if you don't even know how to hit the lifts properly. But its a decent start I guess if there is nothing else. You will get a bit stronger than you already are, but you will never lift big doing that program.

And needing chemical enhancement and top nutritionists to train daily.. is PARTLY true, but really, most people who "train every day" will not train as hard as the best athletes in the world. They have daily massages as well, and its their job pretty much so everything is in place, but me or you could train hard every day without the need of drugs or "top nutritionists", whatever they may be advocating. The difference is, we are working at a much lower level, so nowhere near as much stress on the body, so we can handle it. I can go and squat 150kg every day of the week, no problem. Top 85kg lifters in weightlifting, will be squatting upwards of 220-240 daily. That is a different kettle of fish. And add in 3-4 other exercises, usually to a max or at least for some good volume, AND twice a day? Could I **** do that! Takes years of building up and conditioning yourself to that sort of workload, which is what people don't realise when they think "well the pros train daily, I should train less", not quite like that.

Nutritional requirements are also a joke, and such a massive con by nutritionists, supplement companies that it is just a way for you to get more supplements to meet the 'requirements'.

And most people would be VERY surprised at the doses that people using anabolics are taking (they are very, very low and usually less than what is recommended by the 'experts' who happen to be selling). Even the World Strongest Man big boys.

 

Unloco I'm not going to respond to you, I'm posting to Lunny, if he wants to go ahead and listen to you, he is most welcome.

PS: Bodybuilding.com is not the best site when it comes to anything to do with.. anything, pretty much.

PSS:

I just went along and assumed he wanted to get stronger and more athletic rather than just getting buff, seeing as its a boxing forum, but I agree goals ALWAYS dictate the program in place.

 

In that case, ignore the bodybuilding advice.

You've read what we have to say. Seeing as stronglifts.com is a free resource, try having a look and see if it helps your understanding.

The volume presented in stronglifts, and a focus on the squat, means you can and will get alot stronger doing it, although the high volume of 5x5 may become problematic at some point.

Just have a look and see what you think - although we can allagree that from a strength perspective, you should focus on compound lifts (squats/deadlifts/(overhead)press etc) and not use isolation exercises unles required to fix weaknesses at a much later time.

 

And remember all this stuff is individual so its mainly trial and error of a few years if you are serious about it, to see what works best for you.

There are some things that should be a staple though, like squats. Unless you have crippling arthritis in your knees or one leg etc.

 

This is just a whole load of **** and goes against well established sports science principles. Everyone please ignore this rubbish.

 

I am only going to say this, I ONLY care about strength to size ratio, so at times overtraining never bothered me as long as I stayed strong as hell and didn't get too heavy, and I lifted about five - six times a week, BUT when I started I was doing a full body workout like three times a week and it was terrible, terrible. As soon as I switched to the split routine the results were obvious, in both strength and appearance. So whatever else you decide to do, I really can't recommend those full body routines for any kind of gains. Yuck. But everybody's different.

 

Beginners can usually get away with lifting frequently, because what is heavy for them is not actually heavy. The result is their body adapts to it relatively quickly. When you get to loads that are really heavy, training weights six times a week is a bad idea, especially with boxing training.

As far as split training is concerned, routines involving compound lifts CAN be split into mostly upper body/ lower body workouts ie. Day1 (squat/deadlift) Day 2 (bench/press). However, it is often better for your lifts to separate them into two 'full body' workouts, simply because doing two upperbody lifts will mean the second suffers more often than not.

What I'm doing currently (only 2 days a week)

Day 1:
Squat
Weighted Dips
Weighted Pullups

Day 2:
Press
Deadlift
Weighted Pullups

I don't bench, because of personal philosophy of what is more useful for a combat athlete, but that is irrelevant. As long as you perform the upper body exercises first, your lifts don't seem to be influenced at all. This is jst based on experience (however the theory is from previously mentioned literature). If you are not training in boxing/other sports during the week you could pretty easily fit a couple more guym days in, which would allow you to separate your major lifts and focus on one lift a day, something often done by powerlifters who don't mind being in the gym 4 or more days a week.

 

Bet you can't tell me which exactly
And what makes you a better authority on the matter?
And its a forum, I can say what I like really.