Hello blades, I've always been big into lifting and getting mass on my body. I've rarely ever been into much cardio... But I do cardio probably 3-4 times a week. The problem is I just love doing body weight exercises in various circuit trainings a lot. I could/sometimes do, do them 5-6 times a week. Recently i've seen this can be bad for your overall training. What do you think? Is doing upper/lower body (body weight) circuit training 5 times a week bad for my training? Should I just suck it up and do more cardio? Also, how many times should I work my core a week? Its something I could do everyday and I enjoy doing it but if I need to rest for better results I will. Thanks!
I just got done doing full-body circuit training, two days on, one day off. So four-five days a week. Now I'm doing upper-body one day, lower the next, four days on, one day off. I'm going to switch back to my full-body after a few weeks so I don't let my body adapt to what I'm doing. You're doing fine dood, your body will adapt. If you're sore when you workout, don't worry about it too much. But if you feel drained (different from sore), then take an additional day off to regroup your body's energy levels. Good luck and keep us updated man. edit: If you're sticking to free-weight exercises and you're not using any machines or cables, you don't need to isolate your core because your core is worked when performing lunges, squats, pushups, and etc. And think about it, when in your daily life will you need to isolate your abdominal or lower back muscles with massive force? Never. Just an fyi; some exercises that isolate your abdominal and lower back muscles are detrimental to the health of your spine. Just stick to functional workouts and your core will develop in a healthy manner.
Ahhh, preciate it man! Was gonna take a break tonight, but im about to go pound out a workout now. And the only core workouts I do are leg raises from the floor (straight and to the side), L leg ups on a pull up bar, and knee raises on a pull up bar. Not sure if any of those were what you were talking about with the spine.
Leg raises from the floor are fine (assuming one leg is stabilizing the body and the other leg is raising?). If you're doing leg raises from the pull-up bar, just limit it to once or twice a week. It will activate the lower back muscles and put pressure on your spine. However as long as you get adequate rest, you should be fine. But if you start doing sit-ups everyday, expect to have back problems when you get older. The only reason why some people can do sit-ups all the time is because they started doing it at such a young age and continued through with it so their body was able to adapt quicker to the stress placed upon it. But if you're fully developed (older than 18), don't add too many core workouts unless like I said, you have one leg stabilizing the core. In my opinion, the best core workout would be soccer, swimming, or jump-lunges.
Personal Update: Been doing circuit workouts for 2 weeks now. Upper body one day, lower body the next, upper, lower, day off. I do 20-30 minutes of cardio everyday which include either running, a combination of jumprope/jumping jacks, or hitting the punching bag for a while. Wow I notice a huge difference in the amount of tone-ness in my muscles. I've always been a bulky guy who can push my hefty muscle weight around but i'm starting to see some rip in my muscles and I clearly have a nice ripped 4 pack now. Pretty sure if I continue i'll be able to get the rest of the mass off my stomach and back and keep toning up the rest of my muscles. More updates in a week or so, i'll post picture results in a little too. So far the circuit bodyweight training has worked fantastic! PS: Offday today of course, happy thanksgiving everyone!