Rest: It Does A Body Good

In my Home Workout that I outlined earlier, I mentioned at the end that you should NOT do the workout every day. I'd like to explain why this is important to take at least 48 hours rest between the same resistance training workouts. Without sounding too technical and boring, I'll briefly explain what happens inside your muscles when you lift weights. As you are lifting, your muscles are creating tiny micro-tears in your muscle fibers. As you finish your workout, your body gets to work right away to repair those micro-tears and make them even stronger. The body will reinforce those muscles and help your body get stronger. It takes time though. If you decide to work those same muscles out every day, those micro-tears will not have sufficient time to heal and you'll spend all your time breaking down your muscles, but not enough time building them back up.

This doesn't mean that you can't do resistance training two days in a row -- just make sure you are working different muscles. You can split it up any way you would like: Upper Body/Lower Body, Front/Back, etc. Find what you like best and keep it consistent.

Your body wants to build up those muscles (ladies, this does not mean "bulk up", it just means that your body is getting stronger), so let your wonderful body do its job. Rest between those resistance training workouts and make sure you are also giving it proper nutrition to fuel that recover period.

How do you like to break up your workouts? Do you do a full-body workout every few days, or do you like to break it up?