after several months of regular cardio and running I’m now starting to train my upper body, basically planks and working out with a dumbbell. I’m tall and skinny, so I never had much fat or muscle mass in my arms.
I’ve trained my arms for 3 days in a row, nothing fancy: upright rows, bent-over rows and triceps kickbacks, 10 repetitions each, 2 rounds.
After that I’m so sore I cannot do more, so I turn to cardio and do planks (front and side) and some yoga.
Today, fourth day, I’m not in the mood to tone up my arms because they burn, but should I keep exercising? Doesn’t the burn mean muscle is being built?
I also don’t know if I should work with my arms less than with my legs, should I do cardio and running 5 times a week and arm toning only 3? Would it be better to do both in the same session or to alternate (odd days cardio and running, even days arm toning and yoga)?
Being sore doesn’t mean that muscle is being built, that’s a misconception, it’s actually muscle being damaged.
Soreness is micro-lesions in your muscles, and what builds them stronger is actually the rest following a workout. Because that’s when the body goes around to repair these lesions and builds stronger bonds within the muscle.
What builds muscle is resistance, nutrition and rest, the latter two being the most important.
You can’t build muscle if you don’t feed them right and give them time to recover.
So, killing yourself at the gym 3/4 days in a row, focusing on the same muscle group is actually really counterproductive.
Rotate your training focus with a split like push/pull/legs/core, or upper body/lower body/cardio, or whatever, as long as you enjoy it.
Give yourself time, eat right (as right as you can, don’t fall into the rice/chicken at every meal madness, balance is key), sleep a lot, take some rest days and deload weeks once in a while, and drink plenty of water.
And most importantly, be kind with yourself, it’s a marathon, not a sprint, you might struggle going to the gym some days, but showing up and doing less is better than not doing it at all.
Good advice.
Also, work on your form and not to increase weights. So many are doing some weird sort of back swing exercise when doing curls for, example
I didn’t even start talking about that, but yeah, at least to me, form is paramount over weight/complexity. At least until you have a strong enough foundation. Then you can take some liberty to strengthen in unusual moves.
Mobility and range of motion are also something to work on, it makes many things easier to do in your daily life.
But that’s something for another long post I guess !
Awesome advice