Quote:
Originally Posted by Holladay
A bit off topic from the OP.
A thought has me a bit puzzled. Everyone says they have a: back day, leg day, arm day. I guess that one, they don't wanna get bored, I get that. Two they don't want to over work a muscle group. Additionally, I am not going to enter into a body building competition.
In the Army, we did a bajillion pushups everyday. Was that bad? I am thinking same for the bench, within reason. Can you plank everyday? Can you run everyday?
I say within reason. If you max curls to extreme failure, ya, not everyday.
I want to max efficiency, all body exercise with the least amount of time. The main goal is to lose weight and tone. I understand diet is an important factor. Input and output. I am in the losing weight stage. Once I reach my goal, then it is maintenance. For life. If your occupation requires a lot of movement, then there are not a lot of issues. I fly a desk and getting older.
A work out buddy of mine told me today that after 60 yro, you are screwed as to building muscle. Thus I am getting ready to be screwed soon. Though I am not into building muscle anymore, but more muscle = greater fat burning machine.
I am ready to commit to 30 min/day for the rest of my life. It might be tough at 90 in a wheel chair though. Racing?
Key is mental. Just open the gym door.
With that in mind and 30 min timeline, what are your thoughts.
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I'm no expert, but it's a matter of endurance training vs maximizing muscle growth.
A million push ups won't get you Arnold's chest, but of course will still grow some muscle and will be high on endurance (included cardio, I'd think). If you wanted to max out muscle growth though, you would bench press with a weight that only allowed for anywhere from 3-12 reps (the standard I think is like 3-6, but there's a lot of overlap as 8-12 is still perfectly ok for good muscle growth).
Solely on the basis of muscle growth, the science says anything beyond about 5 sets in one day for one muscle group probably won't matter (wasted reps) as you're just annihilating that muscle, and you can do anywhere from 10-20 sets per week per muscle group.
That's why people do the arm day, leg day, etc... they want the most bang for their buck, which means doing 5 sets for biceps two days a week, 5 for triceps, 5 for chest, etc. They say twice a week is optimal so you aren't going a full week between working out the same muscle group. I'd think the more full body stuff would be good multiple times as you're not hitting one area hard (such as rows), where doing curls everyday or more than about 10 sets per week would probably be a waste for muscle gains.
I personally have three workouts a week where I concentrate on a couple major groups per day... sort of an arm day with a lot of arm stuff, but I do some arms on another day as well.
I work in some endurance/lower weight as well... it amounts to about 3 hours per week not including stretching, plus a few walks/jogs a week that are about 35 minutes each.