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Lifting weights two times a day, everyday

Fatal Jay

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I always hear people say lifting everyday is not good, but I have did research and seen people say they lift everyday and this is from the ripped up guys. So what is truth or what works for the next man might not work for the other?
 

marmel75

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Those guys take steroids which lets them recover quicker and let's them break rules normal people cannot.

Even then it's not a smart idea. They are holding their progress back. For a normal person you'd be overtrained to the point you would likely see little difference than if you didn't workout. All you'd be doing is breaking down muscle tissue constantly and stressing your body out.
 

AttackFormation

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Marmel said what I was going to say, but I'll repeat it for effect. Those guys are not "ripped up" or "genetically blessed", they are on steroids, and if you try to do the same thing drug-free you will break your body down.
 

Fatal Jay

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Thanks guys, so should I lift a day then skip a day?
 

marmel75

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Personally I wouldn't lift more than 4 days a week...right now my trainer has me working out 3 days a week, and one of those is with bands/swiss balls/etc for prehab/rehab work...so I typically only lift weights twice a week. Also has me doing one day of foam rolling/active stretching, one day of Pilates and one day of Yoga...so I am doing something 6 of the 7 days, but only lifting two to two and a half times(sometimes the prehab/reha day has a little lifting in it)...

Hope this helps some. I know when you first start you think working out more is going to lead to faster results, but it really doesn't. The results come over time as the body repeats a process of tearing down and rebuilding the muscle. You will progress pretty quickly for the first 3-6 months, and then a lot of people hit "the wall" where it doesn't seem like you are progressing at all. This comes from the body getting used to the stimulus and having to take time and lay a better foundation to promote more growth. During this time its important not to get discouraged, as you need to remember it needs to make sure everything is ready to grow properly again...your body will refuse to put on more muscle if the ENTIRE infrastructure is not ready to support it---that means bones, tendons, ligaments, etc...your body will never put itself in a position where it could possibly injure itself by adding more muscle to a frame that cannot support it. You will notice "spurts" of growth where nothing will happen for a few months and then it looks like you are growing like a weed for 3-4 weeks. Those 3-4 weeks were set up by the 3 months prior to that--without those 3 months of hard work before, you don't get those 3-4 weeks of growth.

Now back about a year or year and a half ago I was running a Gironda 8x8 program, which entailed working out twice a day for 3 days on and 1 day off...however they were fast paced workouts, no more than 20-30 minutes each and it was volume based...you can only do something like that for a very short time frame before you fry your central nervous system(CNS) and fall into overtraining. I lasted about 5 weeks with that(6 weeks was the max recommended), and probably should have only done 4 weeks as the 5th week was pure hell and I lack motivation...you definitely should not be doing something like that until you have a solid base and have been lifting for at least 3 years...its very intense and if you don't have the proper foundation it will not be helpful and could be detrimental to your progress.
 
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NSX-R

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I'm a pro athlete and i'm training 6 times per week , 4 hours per day. Your body needs at least one day to rest. The muscle during the workout gets damaged and during the rest it recovers . That's how it gets bigger and stronger. When you never rest you might think that it's going to become better but this is where everybody makes a mistake. Try to imagine when you have a wound on your leg and you hit this place everyday . Not only the wound won't close but the opposite. It's the same.

Good nutrition is also the most important thing aswell .
 

AttackFormation

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Adding to what marmel said, I think there's more to it than the body only adding on muscles when everything is ready. We can see on drug users that their muscles do swell up while their ligaments don't, ie. that it's (or can be) controlled by hormones. What the body actually doesn't want to do is let you use it in a way that causes any kind of damage to it, ie. growth. That's why the last set for each body part I do is typically a drop set, you have to break the psychological (and physical) barrier. It's the same thing for the rest of life. The body is always trying to stay within the habits it knows and avoid anything that expends energy (especially/at least if it doesn't get a dopamine rush for it) or causes fear.

Marmel bringing up Gironda's program lets me make another point about drug users. Do not use programs made by them, not only do they not need to be knowledgeable on the subject but they could be dangerously ignorant or even malicious.

If you want help with the details of your workout routine, I'll be happy to get it right.
 

EyeBRollin

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I only lift twice a week, and it is plenty. People who work out every day usually aren't going that hard, or are on PEDs.

Start with 3 times a week, then as your weight / intensity goes up, you can go down to twice a week weights (strictly cardio on the 3rd day).
 

AttackFormation

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Chiming in on training frequency, my idea is that you only have so much fuel in your body to actually perform with at any one time combined with not wanting to fry your CNS. In addition to martial arts I'm in the gym 5-6 days a week (lower body 1-2 times and two upper body groups 2 times each with lats trained thrice a week) and it works for me because:

1: Your body gets used to it
2: I sleep well, I eat well
3: I only do 3 sets per exercise with the last typically being a drop set, instead of grinding out my CNS with endless exhaustive workloads
4: Saturday is dedicated to rest
5: I've ramped my training up progressively and take additional rest days when/if needed. When you first start working out, just going a couple of days a week is a pain. Then it's going four times. Then it's adding martial arts on that. Then it's going straight to the dojo after the gym with only the travel time as rest. Then it's adding more MA sessions per week, which is what I'm currently working on. Point being that like Espi said, your body is capable of more than you think if you do things in an intelligent manner.

I can't emphasize enough the importance of good quality, long sleep for your life in general. That's the most important thing before you even think of going to the gym.
 

EyeBRollin

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The keys to lifting weights is to get stronger. If you aren't increasing the bar, you aren't improving. 2-3 days per week, increasing weight ~5% each time yields huge results over time.
 

marmel75

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At some point you are going to have to figure out how to get bigger without adding more weight At 188 lbs I got up to 380 lb bench(for 2), 475 lb squat(for 3) and 565 lb deadlift(for 1) for a big 3 of 1,420 lbs. Know what that got me?

Injured. In all three cases. Badly strained my left pec tie in, knee ended up buckling after a few squat reps, and back got jacked up on the deadlift. Yeah I got a lot of size and thickness from it and while working up to that point, but was it worth it in the long run?

Maybe not...my body is wrecked right now, always am dealing with one thing or another it seems like.

my current training plan rarely has me lifting very heavy and when it does it's always a 5 RM weight, which is a lot safer...my trainer believes in varying reps/weights on a regular basis and the results have been very good. You don't NEED heavier weight all the time. Eventually all that will lead to is being injured.
Have not lost any size and in some areas have grown, in large part to new exercises he introduced which hit different fibers of the muscle...

Heed my warning or you will pay for it as you get older. Those injuries in your 20s and 30s will start causing you to feel them almost every day in your 40s and beyond...Nothing major just annoying soreness and areas that seem to get reinjured and/or "tweaked" much easier.
 

mrgoodstuff

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Is it always about getting "bigger"? Sometimes you have an awesome size and you want to tighten up what you have without adding size. Or you want to increase the hardness of this particular body part and all the rest is fine.

It feels good to get stronger, and I chase it often. But I think like the guys are saying varying sets, reps, tempo can make a bunch of difference many of us are not willing to realize.
 

marmel75

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Disagree. Increasing volume doesn't increase strength. Increasing weight does. Food is the variable in adding size, yes.
Things aren't as cut and dry as you'd like to make them. Volume training can in fact increase strength.
 

chaj3_11

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I do 3 days 1 off and im fine, no injuries or anything. And yeah i do lift heavy.

Bicep/tricep
Chest/ back
Leg/shoulder
cardio day
Bicep/tricep

And so on. People vastly overestimate what 'overtraining is'. Find what works for your body as everybody is different.
 

marmel75

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I do 3 days 1 off and im fine, no injuries or anything. And yeah i do lift heavy.

Bicep/tricep
Chest/ back
Leg/shoulder
cardio day
Bicep/tricep

And so on. People vastly overestimate what 'overtraining is'. Find what works for your body as everybody is different.
Nah. Most people vastly overrestimate the intensity of their workouts and what heavy means. 85% of the people I see in the gym's idea of "heavy" is less than my final warm up set on most exercises.

The reason more people don't truly overtrain is because they won't push themselves hard enough. Most people aren't built to deal with that type of pain and fatigue every workout. Ronnie Coleman said it best..."Everyone wants to be big but nobody wants to lift no heavy ass weights." Same reason you see guys month after month at the gym that look exactly the same as when you first got there.

Truth is, most people are just b!tch @ss muthafvckers when it comes to having to deal with feeling like you've been run over by a train and then thrown down 10 flights of stairs every day. They aren't willing to pay the price. So they try to convince themselves they are working hard and lifting "heavy". The one place they can't fool is the mirror. The mirror always lets you know the truth.

I stand by what I said. 6 weeks is about the max you can truly go hard and heavy without overtraining. In fact an easy test you can do is to take your pulse rate upon waking and before moving or getting up for 3 days straight, take an average and that's your baseline. Check it on a regular basis...if you get to a point where it's more than 8 bpm higher than baseline you are in a state of overtraining.
 
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Yewki

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Very few people actually have the desire and discipline to overtrain. If you're scared of overtraining, you're probably not even close. People need to also stop comparing how many times per week they go to the gym. It doesn't matter how often you go, but what you do and how often you're working a particular muscle group.
 

mrgoodstuff

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I just like to keep it really simple: exercise more and eat less. That's what's given me really good results.

I could care less about strength or size. I never go to the gym thinking that I have to increase the weight from the last session, & I never count calories either.

I've attached two photos below. The first one is me when I weighed about 225 pounds with an estimated bodyfat of about 20%.

The second photo is me at 200 pounds and approximately 10% body fat. I'm leaner and more muscular--yet I definitely wasn't stronger. As I lost the weight and burned the fat I never increased the resistance. In fact I never really lifted heavy at all. Most of the stuff that I did was body weight exercises.

As long as I look strong, that's all that really matters. Actual strength really doesn't mean much to me. I could care less how much I can bench.
Face a lot leaner in the second pic. I have to assume you get a lot better attention at a even 200 than 225.
 
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