I go to the gym 2 hours a day, 6 times a week. It’s been about a month and a half. I do cardio for 1 hour and lift weights 1 hour. I’m a girl, so I don’t lift weights on my arm and legs to the point where it gets sore. I’ve been growing muscles, but my arms and legs don’t get sore. So is it still bad if I lift weights on my arms and legs everyday?
The general rule for weight training is;
many reps + low weight = tone
few reps + heavy weight = mass
If you are looking to tone up you probably want to be doing the first of these. Being sore for days is not necessary to see results, but you should make sure that you are doing enough that you feel your muscles burning during the workout since the only time that you are improving muscular fitness is in the reps you do AFTER your muscles are fatigued. Everything up to that point is warm up. The more you do after the muscles start to burn, the more benifit you will see from your workout.
Also you need to be sure and give your muscles time to recover between workouts. The work out tears the tissue down and the body responds by building it back stronger. If you are working the same groups every day you are only tearing the tissue down and never letting it build back up. You can do weight training everyday, lots of people do, but you should divide your workout to focus on different muscle groups each day. For example alternate upper body and lower body days, or even arms and shoulders day, chest and back day, and legs day. If you give your muscles a little time to recover you should see much quicker results.
No don’t train the same muscles two days in a row…if you do, your not giving your body a chance to rest and that is when the magic occurs so to speak…that is when new muscle fibers are being created…DURING rest, not during exercise that’s why resting those muscles the next day is crucial. You don’t want to over exercise either because you may cause your body to go into too much of a caloric deficit and pile on weight faster when you eat…I would do 45 minutes of cardio daily, and train the upper and lower body on alternate days for about 20-30 minutes.
i would not recommend working out specific muscle groups more than once a week. your muscles grow and get stronger when they rest, not when you work them out. after a good thorough workout, you won’t need to work them out for about another week. overtraining can cause injuries and have the opposite effect on the muscle as well. you may work core everyday and run 5 days a week though.