I encounter these comment/questions frequently (not exact words but the idea is there, emphasis mine):
"
Everytime after i go to the gym, i am sore for a few days. Anything wrong? What should i do?"
"My arms are sore from yesterday's session. Can i
go to the gym today?"
"Keep doing pullups until you
cannot do any more. Do
everyday."
So the impression i get from this type of comments are that:
1) They are training High Intensity
every time they go to the gym.
2) Training
has to be High Intensity, aka "Go Heavy or Go Home".
3) Training
means training to failure, otherwise it's not counted.
Are you doing these or any combinations of these?
If you do, you are looking for trouble. If you are young and/or just starting out, probably some of these methods can work, for some time. But it is just that, for some time. You need to balance the work forces and the restorative forces to have real long lasting progress and freedom from injury.
It is just a matter of time that you would hit a wall, get sick or get injured. It is just a natural law. When you are training, you are breaking your body down. If you don't give it the recovery it needs, it won't get stronger. And by recovery i don't mean passive rest. I mean doing joint mobility, yoga and other light activities to enhance the natural recovery rate.
Whether you train 3x per week, 5x per week or 6x per week is not so much a matter as getting full recovery before you hit another High Intensity session. If you are training High Intensity every two days, your High Intensity will get lower and lower as you don't get enough recovery. Even if you are training different bodyparts on every session, the fatigue goes systemic.
Anyway, rather than boring you with options - you can get confused from too many choices - which you don't know how or what to choose, i would just propose to you a better way to periodize your
microcycle and
mesocycle. If you don't know what these mean, Google them. I am not going to spoonfeed you.
Why do i say that you don't know what to choose? Finding the perfect training split for each individual is a time consuming process. And if you are just an average guy training without an expert coach, you would do better following a proven
formula than trying to come up with your own perfect training split. I say formula because it is just a guideline. It is not a must to do this. But this template is good enough that you do not need to tinker with it for good results. And i can vouch that the results can be better than if you try to tweak it.
I myself would rather and do follow this formula to the letter than try to find a perfect training split.
The formula is none other than the 4x7 (pronounced "four by seven").
Day 1: No Intensity (RPE 1-2)
AM: Intu-Flow joint mobility
ONLY
Day 2: Low Intensity (RPE 3-4)
AM: Intu-Flow joint mobility
PM: Prasara Yoga
Day 3: Moderate Intensity (RPE 5-7)
AM: Intu-Flow joint mobility
Moderate intensity workout. Of course it is assumed that you do your warm up and cool down.
PM: Prasara Yoga
Day 4: High Intensity (RPE 8-10)
AM: Intu-Flow joint mobility
High intensity workout. Of course it is assumed that you do your warm up and cool down.
PM: Prasara Yoga
And you repeat these four consecutive days seven times for a total of 28 days.
Now i know what is your concern. "Doing only one High Intensity session every four days is not enough." But without going through the technical explanations, in the simplest explanation, these four days are designed in such a way to maximize your performance. It is designed to ride the wave of your body's natural recovery and energy fluctuations. Any more frequent and your High Intensity would suffer.
Of course this formula will not work for 100% of the population. You can tweak it to your own unique rhythm. I am not going to tell you just yet how to tweak it. Because tendency for people who are told "do this" is that they would ask "can i do this instead, or this, or this". Just do this for a start. You will notice a difference not just in your performance but also your health.
