Working out has long been a “no pain – no gain” type of mentality. However, many of the top athletes, who work out every day, never go all out or completely tire themselves out when it comes to their workouts. It has been noted in several journals, magazines, and studies that if you work out at about 70% of your personal max every day, you’ll wake up the next day feeling great and never be as sore if you gave it your maximum effort during your workout.
When working out or exercising every day, it’s impossible to go at 100% each time. If you went at your maximum each workout you will develop DOMS or Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness.
Once sore from a workout you’re:
- more likely not going to work out the next day
- more likely not getting a good workout the following day if you do workout
- dread the workout your about to do the next day
- if you dread working out it’s not fun and
- If it’s not fun, you’ll most likely not keep working out for the long haul.
Working out should be fun!
When you first decide to work out, the first time in a while, you most likely go light on the workout to ease your body back into the activity. If you go back to working out two, three, four days in a row, you should maintain that pace in week two because you’re most likely having fun. If you have fun, you’re going to work out more often, adding to your activity and get into shape quicker.
In world wrestling, the Russians are far superior to the U.S. The main difference in what the Russians do is they never spar at 100%, they go at about 60 – 70%. This allows each sparring partner to battle and learn from each other’s moves. If they spar at 70% for 2 hours a day at 5 days a week, they would end up training for over 500 hours in one year. U.S. wrestlers spar at 90% for two hours twice a week. U.S. wrestlers typically get over 200 hours of training within one year. With a difference of 300 plus hours is why the Russians tend to be superior at the same sport.
Arnold Schwarzenegger in the prime of his training would go workout for an hour and a half each day at about 60 – 70% and be done. This allowed him to work out every day.
NFL football players don’t train hard during the week. They have a hard day during the game, but most of the week they’re training at 50 – 70% max to prepare for the weeks game. If they went hard during practice, the players would not be at their best during the game.
How should the average person exercise or workout?
Example: if you were to do pull-ups and your max is 10 a nice round number, you couldn’t do 11 on your own without help. You should only do 6 or 7 pull-ups! The reason is so you don’t feel sore the next day. You should wake up and feel great, refresh and looking forward to doing 6 – 7 more pull-ups that day.
If you did 10 pull-ups, you would be sore, not feeling good and there would be no way you would be even able to come close to doing 10 more pull-ups that next day.
Have fun at the gym, on the track or wherever you get your activity in during the day. The longer you can sustain working out everyday the longer you’ll continue to do it.
