Lifting weights is one of the most positive strength workouts for the body. Burning a lot of calories is among the many benefits of this exercise, but it’s also very important for building muscle, increasing metabolism, strengthening bones, and burning fat. For all these reasons, they should be done frequently.
However, weights should fit into a training plan. Although they help build a muscular body, a daily practice carries risks of injury and can be detrimental to achieving your goal. To find out if it’s good to do weights every day, how often you should do them and other exercises to combine them properly, we recommend that you continue reading this article.
Table Of Content
1. What happens if I lift weights every day
2. How many days a week can you lift weights?
3. Tips for lifting weights correctly
4. Is it bad to exercise your arms every day?
What happens if I lift weights every day
The secret to knowing if lifting weights every day is good or bad is to listen to your body. Every day is different: rest, diet, work, stress and accumulated training are factors that will influence the state of your muscles. When you feel especially exhausted, with stiffness for several days of the week, it means that the body asks for a break.
Is it good or bad to lift weights every day? Exercising with weights on a daily basis ends up leading to muscle fatigue. Therefore, it is not recommended. The chances of suffering a muscle microtear or a more severe injury increase as you accumulate training of this type.
Thus, it is convenient to give a margin of rest between training sessions for each muscle group and avoid forcing them every day. Many people believe that this way they will speed up the process and develop muscles sooner, but quite the opposite: they will have more physical problems.
If you want to know more about muscle fatigue during exercise, we recommend this other article in which we answer Is it bad to exercise every day?
How many days a week can you lift weights?
If daily strength training is not recommended, so how many days a week is it good to do weights? To resolve your doubts, it is important to keep in mind that a minimum of 48 hours of rest is needed between sessions so that each muscle group recovers from the effort made.
Considering 48 hours of rest, as a general rule, 3 days a week are established as the ideal frequency to do weights. On those days, you will have to train the main muscle groups of the body with exercises of all kinds: bench press, squats, and others that involve the legs, shoulders and back.
If on any of the 3 days a week you have done a very intense strength training session, your muscles will need a little more room to recover from that effort. In this case, leaving 72 hours of rest is a good decision and the body will appreciate it.
On recovery days, bet on other exercises or activities such as running, yoga, walking or pilates. In this way, you will improve performance in the following strength training: the blood will flow, providing more nutrients and oxygen to the previously exercised muscles.
Tips for lifting weights correctly
After knowing that it is not good to do weights every day, you should know that it will not be good to exercise with them if it is not done properly. So how do you lift weights correctly? Here are some tips to lift weights without risk of injury:
- Divide the training session by muscle groups to exercise frequently and respect the rest times of all muscles.
- When you feel muscle fatigue even with the stipulated breaks, perform a couple of repetitions or exercises less for each session to give the body a break and strengthen it progressively.
- Find out which weights are the most suitable for your physical condition and the training session you want to do. The fixed ones are the best to exercise intensely. For their part, adjustable dumbbells allow you to modify the weights, but they force you to constantly change the discs, preventing you from moving from one exercise to another quickly.
- Make progressive efforts, with full and wide movements.
- Work all the major muscle groups in each workout, that is, both legs, back and chest. Focusing exclusively on one area like your abs will be detrimental and prevent you from achieving your goal.
Is it bad to exercise your arms every day?
The muscles of the arms need the same rest as the rest of the muscle groups, so it is not convenient to exercise them daily. If you want to strengthen them, you must give them rest and vary the exercises.
The exercises to get muscles in the arms can be with weights, but also with other varied exercises during the week. This combination will allow you to build muscle without the risk of overexerting yourself and injuring yourself.
Some of the alternative arm exercises that can be combined with weights are the following:
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- Step climbers: use a step, sofa or chair to support yourself. The higher it is, the harder the exercise will be. Stretch your body by changing the support of each hand every 10 to 15 seconds. Try to keep your core active throughout the exercise without allowing your buttocks to rise excessively.
- Arm scissors: stand up stretching your arms forward. Later, you open them to each side and close them by putting one on top of the other. Alternate the location of each arm (down and up) when you close, repeating the movement for 30 seconds.
- Skipping rope without a rope – Pretend you’re skipping rope with full arm movements. Take 30-second breaks between reps. And of course, if you have a rope, you can use it.
Follow Jeremy Ethier to know How Many Days A Week Should You Workout?