Overdo it with the weights and lifting-prohibitive soreness persists for five to seven days. Of course you don’t wanna do that over and over, but what’s the science there? Will that always cause loss of progress or what?
Thanks, you knowledgeable people.
Im only 15 years old…but from reading the articles on this website…i found out this. That when you overwork yourself your body creates a hormone called coritsol (which is good) but when you over work yourself your body releases to much coritsol and in turn the coritsol can sometimes impede your muscle progress or even reduce testosterone.
Hmm, can anybody corroborate that?
That’s exactly right. Cortisol levels do increase after hard lifting, and is a natural and beneficial increase. However, if the levels are too high it can be extremely detrimental (increased bodyfat storage and catabolism)
As far as the soreness issue, a good rule of them is 3 days. If you’re too sore to retrain the same muscle group after 3 days, either the volume is too high, or you’re not eating properly. There are 2 reasons for the 3 day benchmark.
First, your body will only adapt to a consistent stimulus. Meaning that the more often you can work a muscle group (providing adequate rovery time) the better.
Second, you don’t want to give your body a chance to “de-train”. I personally feel this is more of a psychological factor, but I notice if I’m out the gym for more than 3-4 days all of my lifts are down a bit from my previous workout, no matter how good I feel.
Short answer I suppose is this, a monster workout that leaves you hurting for a week won’t kill you once in awhile (and might be good if you know you cant make the gym for a few days longer than normal) but as a rule of thumb, it should be avoided.
OK, I guess that’s what I was looking for. Thanks Jeffe, Jerry.
Sometimes when I change workouts I’ll get a soreness that lasts until my next workout of the same muscle grouping, whether that workout be 2 days away or 6 days away. For example, I changed my squatting routine on Tuesday from 5x5 to 3x10 and was VERY sore for the next few days. Then, on Friday (yesterday), I did 1x20…and I was no longer sore, and I’m not sore today either. Maybe you could try training again but going light and see what happens.
[quote]Goggleman wrote:
OK, I guess that’s what I was looking for. Thanks Jeffe, Jerry.[/quote]
T-Nation articles FTW
In my opinion if you are still sore after 3 days, that does not give you a good excuse to skip out of training. It just gives you a good reminder to stretch more after training and any given time of day you are reminded of the soreness when the opportunity presents itself of course.