New to the gym: how often should I workout a targeted area?

[KBird]

Hi.

I am new to the gym, I used to play sports and would do home-workouts, but I am now transitioning to weight lifting. I did a core session 3 days ago, and I am still really sore. For those who have done specific muscle-targeted workouts/days, how often do you target one muscle group per week? Should I wait a week to do another core session? I did legs yesterday, and plan to do arms and back today to give my core a break.

I am also trying to figure out if full-body sessions are better for me versus targeting specific muscle-group. I am a broke student, and can't afford a trainer at the moment, so I'm open to all/any advice. :)

[Sonorous]

It really depends on many factors like:
• How well is your recovery? (sleep, nutrition, hot &/or cold therapy, etc)
• How hard you're training/how much tension & stress are you putting your muscles under?
• How resilient is the given muscle group?
• Is it compound or isolated?
• What are your goals?

My general rule is: If sleep is good & I'm still sore, skip a day for the sore muscle group & try again the next day. If sleep is still good & I'm still sore after that, workout the muscle group but really be careful, feel it out, do lower volume work, & don't be afraid to skip another day if something feels off. I prefer not to go 48hours without training anything. For instance, today I only did pushups & side laterals because my back doesn't feel as recovered. But tomorrow I will do pullups & legs.

Some weeks I feel stronger than other weeks. So I approach training differently. Some weeks I can do high volume & really go all out. Other weeks, I need to let my joints recover, lower training frequency, etc. I just make sure that whatever I do, I'm still training at a good enough tension. Another example is a few days ago I was doing normal pushups just fine. But my sleep hasn't been the best this week. As a result, I really don't feel like my elbow joints are recovering well. So I did knee pushups today. But I paused at the stretched position, did a slow & controlled eccentric of 2+ seconds, & made sure I stayed within the rep range for my specific goal (which is hypertrophy). Even went to failure on the last set.

The less tension & stress you put your muscles, joints, & connective tissues under, the more frequently you can train them. For instance, if I just did one set of pushups everyday for a week & didn't even go to failure during the set but still put at least 40% effort into the movement while training diligently, I could experience similar strength gains as someone who only trains the muscle group twice a week putting near 100% effort into it, doing 3-5 sets each time, & going to failure at the end each time. This is because the set range per week matters more than the effort. Recent studies suggest that as long as you're putting in that at least 40% effort, you'll see gains. And you'll be able to train more frequently without having to de-load as soon or feel any intense systemic fatigue.

[Sonorous]

Oh yeah I forgot to say that doing core & legs for instance are really systemically fatiguing exercises. So they may need more recovery time. It's why on the days where I train either, I do them at the end of the workout due to how tiring they make the body.

[Oliverlogan263]

Here's what I would recommend as a general guidelines for a newbie at the gym:

- For the first few weeks, aim for full body workouts 2-3 times per week. This gives your muscles adequate rest while you're still building a baseline strength level.

- Once you feel comfortable with the movements and have gotten past initial muscle soreness, you can start splitting it up into a standard upper/lower or push/pull split. This trains each muscle group 1-2 times per week.

- For body parts like legs and back that have larger muscles, once per week is good. For things like biceps, triceps and shoulders, hitting them 1-2 times is fine.

- If a group is still really sore, give it an extra days rest before training it again. No need to push through deep pain as a beginner.

- Stick with compound, multi-joint movements at first before adding too many isolation exercises.

Hope this helps give you a starting framework! Definitely listen to your body - better to ease into it than risk injury. And don't be afraid to look up YouTube videos if you're unsure of form on anything. Just keep at it!

[jahaims]

All of this is easy to look up for free

[KBird]

Thats why Im asking here. I looked it up earlier and found advice that stated you should still work the muscle group regardless of whether its sore or not, and also other advice that stated you should wait at least a week. Im not looking for a free planned workout here, or to get a deal that I should be paying for. I just dont want to hurt myself. If this is so easy to look up, please provide a source that you would recommend.

[Iron_Man]

Every day upper body one day legs next