Muscle rebuilding Question.

[Jellybean1984]

So it was brought up that yopur muscles should have a day to repair themselves... True, somewhat true, false not nessasary.
I have looked everywhere and found SOOOO many answers wondering if anyone wants to put there imput.

[2big4mysize]

Re: Muscle rebuilding Question.

if you are into heavy weith lifting exercise or strenous other exercise designed to "tear" the muscle tissue to force it to repair itself and get stronger or bigger then yes you need a day off. But think about it you use your jaw muscle every day eating and talking do, you use your leg muscles every day wlaking around standing up sitting down. you ever give it a day off? nope so if you are doing a lighter exercie like waling or even slow running like Betty does you can go every day.Even our vidoits are foing a big amount of exercise every day Your body will tell you if you overdid it with pain so you can back off. soreness isn't pain though.

[Jellybean1984]

Re: Muscle rebuilding Question.

What about sit-ups and/or crunches?

[2big4mysize]

Re: Muscle rebuilding Question.

it is very hard to over work your abs. you use them every day too have you laide in bed not moving to give your tummy muscles a day off yet? Now if you decide to do 1000 crunchies and only do 50 now then yes you might need a day off.
As we tell folk doing astkins to listen to their hunger list to your abs they will start to burn when you are at what your limit ofr that session should be stop and then in a min or two start again and see if one crunch kills you you have maxwed then out if not go for it.

[Jellybean1984]

Re: Muscle rebuilding Question.

thanks

[ttdriver]

Re: Muscle rebuilding Question.

Yes, I do run slow, but I run long periods of time (upwards of 5 hours) on Saturdays and I definitely need a day off after that. Not sure if that's because my muscle fibers need time to heal, or if its because I'm old! Either way, I do MUCH better if I give my body a chance to rest between long pushes.

Betty

[2big4mysize]

Re: Muscle rebuilding Question.

Betty they were discussing taking every other day off to heal, not having one rest day after a 5 hr run which was why I used you as an example. Now after your Marathon we expect you to take some time off.

[dev]

Re: Muscle rebuilding Question.

if you are into heavy weith lifting exercise or strenous other exercise designed to "tear" the muscle tissue to force it to repair itself and get stronger or bigger then yes you need a day off. But think about it you use your jaw muscle every day eating and talking do, you use your leg muscles every day wlaking around standing up sitting down. you ever give it a day off? nope so if you are doing a lighter exercie like waling or even slow running like Betty does you can go every day.Even our vidoits are foing a big amount of exercise every day Your body will tell you if you overdid it with pain so you can back off. soreness isn't pain though.

I agree, soreness is not pain. However, you should never feel pain, as pain equates to injury. You should on the other hand, feel sore. If I don't feel sore after a workout, I dont feel as if it was a good one.

Muscle rebuilding occurs when you incur a stress on your muscles that begins to make small tears into the muscle fibers (this is where that feeling of "soreness" comes in). Now, your body is presented with a task of rebuilding said muscle tissue. If it did not, we would become weaker with each successive workout until we could not lift ourselves. This task of rebuilding muscle tissue is great for people who want to lose weight as it will raise your metabolic rate. Your body will use calories to repair muscle. How many calories your body will use will depend on the size of your muscles, intensity of workout, muscle groups worked, and genetics.

As you can see anaerobic muscle conditioning is highly desireable to those who want to lose weight, but people are concerned with "But if I lift weights I will look bulky! I want to look toned!". The difference between keeping what muscle you have and building muscle is your diet.

Every person needs a certain number of calories every day to maintain their weight. Eat more and you will gain weight (this can be muscle or fat weight), eat less and you will lose weight. So therefore, one cannot assume that they will build muscles while losing weight. To completely destroy this argument, on a diet you can only hope to maintain what muscle mass you currently have.

To have a body that looks "toned" is a BS word. "Toning" is only the combination of two processes, fat loss and keeping (and hopefully strengthening) what muscle you have. So lift heavy (8-10 reps/set) and tear down those muscles, you'll probably notice a shrinking waistline! You will need to give yourself at least one day off to recover from a good workout. If you want to workout more than three days a week, or you just want to split up your muscle groups, google "3-day split" or "4-day split".