Is it better to practice strength training every day or every other day

There is no standard answer to whether to practice strength training every day or every other day. It all depends on your training content, goals and current recovery level. There is no "golden frequency" that applies to everyone.

The young members of the provincial weightlifting team that I know have a 6-day-a-week training plan that includes all the strength content, and I have never seen anyone lose weight. The guy who plays street gymnastics in the park downstairs trains pull-ups and muscle-ups for 2 hours every day. His latissimus dorsi is trained like two small wings. His condition is much better than that of many gym goers who train three times a week. The core reason is very simple: People's "training every day" is divided into different training parts. Today you practice lower limb squats and pulls, tomorrow you practice upper limb push, and acquire core and special skills the day before. The muscle groups that were sore the day before will not be used at all the next day. It is equivalent to rotating and resting all the time. Of course there will be no problems. If you have a certain training foundation, the goal is to hit a PR (personal maximum weight), prepare for a competition, or you have strong recovery ability, usually eat enough protein and sleep for 8 hours, and even have the conditions to do fascia relaxation and physical therapy assistance, training every day can make your strength and muscles increase faster with higher training intensity. The popular high-frequency training school of "training each part 2-3 times a week" essentially relies on the logic of part-part rotation to arrange training more intensively. Many practitioners have reported that compared with the traditional model of training a single part once a week, the muscle-building efficiency is about 30% higher.

But these words are not for newcomers who have just entered the industry to rush forward. I met a young girl who had just graduated in the studio two years ago. In order to quickly develop the vest line, she practiced full-body circulation every day in the first week. She gritted her teeth and reached failure in each set. As a result, when she did the deadlift on the third day, her waist shook and she just slipped away. It took almost two weeks to rest before she dared to come back and touch the equipment. What many people say about "can't practice every day" is actually aimed at the situation of "training the whole body every time, and then dying". After all, the logic of muscle growth is "train to tear down muscle fibers - rest and replenish nutrients - excessive recovery to become stronger." For example, if there is a hole in your clothes, you have to give the tailor time to mend it, right? If you just mend half of it and then make a new tear, then the dress will never be mended properly, and it might end up being so rotten that you can’t keep it. Novices have poor nerve recruitment ability. It usually takes 48 hours to recover from a full-body workout. At this time, practice every other day, or practice three times a week to leave enough time for the body to rest, but it is much more efficient than practicing every day. In the old-school bodybuilding training logic, many people recommend training a single part once a week. This actually leaves enough recovery time for large muscle groups such as the chest, back, and legs for 72 hours, which is suitable for the kind of training mode that squeezes a single part to the limit every time you train.

In fact, you really don’t have to worry about whether others practice every day or every other day. Your own body feeling is the most accurate. If you have finished practicing the day before and there is no obvious soreness in the area the next day, you are full of energy when you get up, and your grip strength is not lost, then you can continue to practice; if you feel heavy all over when you get up, you are panting after climbing the third floor, and it is difficult to even twist the mineral water bottle, then rest quickly, lie down and watch movies and eat something good, it is much more useful than carrying yourself to the gym to paddle for 10 minutes. I have been practicing for almost 8 years. When I was in my twenties, I relied on my youth to recover quickly. I went to the gym 6 days a week and trained on different parts. My strength did increase very quickly. It only took more than a year to go from 60kg to 140kg in squats. Now I am over 30 and my job is not as good as before. I was busy and often stayed up late to catch up on the plan, and my recovery speed was visibly slowed down. So I practiced 4 times a week, twice for full body circulation and twice for differentiation. After practicing, I had to find time to do foam rolling to relax. The effect was not much worse, and I rarely suffered from pain for three days after practicing.

To put it bluntly, worrying about frequency is really the most unnecessary thing. If you go to the gym every day, paddling and playing with your phone for half an hour every time, then you might as well spend an hour every other day working on your capacity and standard movements. When it comes to strength training, it has always been "what suits you best." Don't stick to those standardized training tables on the Internet. Feeling the feedback of your own body is better than anything else.