Is it good to work out sore?

Not when you're that sore... you have to slow down or you'll wind up sick or injured and have to take a lot more time off.

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Every single time I work out I wind up sore, but just for a couple of days; I always do too much. The problem is that when I'm working out I feel fine, even good. So I push myself just a little more and it is always too much. I don't even want to be sore for a couple of days because I have a toddler and she needs to be picked up a lot, etc.

Sounds like you're overdoing it, netfool. A little soreness two days after a workout is okay but if you're doing this megaworkout only once a week, you'll never get in the groove. Work out more often and less strenuously.

I did something similar a couple years ago. I took a week off from the gym go hunting for my 40th birthday. When I came back, during my first workout, I didn't lower my weights. Felt a bit funny, thought I could work through the pain. Two days later I went again and realized I couldn't lift at all - left shoulder was hamburger. Could barely wash my hair for a month. Wound up on NSAI's, in therapy, etc. Took over a year to recover.

So take it easy.

Thanks for the replies, I'll let the pain pass.

start off slow -- lighter weights, not too many reps -- then slowly increase both...

If you're in PAIN, then it's not good. If you're a little sore, that's normal.

Are you warming up properly, and not jumping right to heavy weights? Make sure you warm up by doing light weights for each excercise, and NOT by stretching. Save the stretching for after the workout.

Question: why are you doing chest, shoulders, and back on the same day? You're probably doing too much at once.

Ideally, you want to split those muscle groups into individual days. Example: chest on Monday, back on Wednesday, and shoulders on Friday, and toss in biceps on one of those days with a muscle group, and triceps on another day.

My routine is during week days: Day 1, chest. Day 2, back. Day 3, shoulders. Day 4, arms. I'm lazy and stupid, so I have been neglecting my legs. I've gotten to the point where I'm pretty damn unproportional.

No good Slappy! Guys with big biceps and scrawny legs look wierd. Now's the time to work on those legs so that next spring you can break out some nice shorts and flaunt those gams.

Get yourself a trainer. I know a lot of gyms offer semi-personal trainers to help customize a workout for exactly what you want and you won't kill yourself.

No kidding, huh? It's called "beach muscles." I've got the same legs from when I was 140lbs, and I'm 180 right now.

I've been having a hard enough time getting to the gym 4 days a week, nevermind 5. Plus I HATE doing legs with a passion. Someday I'll break out of the funk.

Join a swim team, slappy. They'll get those scrawny legs of yours in shape. Swimmer's shoulders and legs <swoon>




<thud>

Swimming? Haha! That wouldn't do crap for me, except make me skinny. Oh, and get me into shape cardio-wise. If only I had a pool...

Squats are what I need.

I guess you don't look at Olympic swimmers much. They have the most extraordinary bodies.

I used to swim with a Masters-level swim team. I learned to hold my breath really well, swim underwater and ogle.

Wow, so working out a single muscle group one time a week is enough? How long do you work on that muscle for?
For my chest I was doing 3*6 upper & lower benchpress followed by a 3*6 butterfly. It was only about 120 pounds, but, I do them reeeaaalll slow.
I also did 3*6 slow pullups, dips, lat pull downs & regular pulls, overhead press, a few bicep curls, destroyed my abs doing curls and ran 3 miles afterwards.

Too much for a signle day I guess. Once I heal, I'll break it down to two muscle groups a day, and a 2 or 3 mile run.

Yes, it's pretty common practice to work each bodypart once a week. It takes a while for your muscles to recover/heal.

You're doing good excercises. But if you leave more room to concentrate on each group, you'll have much better results, and you'll heal more efficiently. Like when you do shoulders, you'll have time to do other excercises besides presses, like shrugs(which traps are technically back), side dumbell raises, or upright rows, for example.

Also, I do back the workout day after chest. Because when you do chest, you're also hitting your shoulders, so you don't want to follow the day after chest with shoulders. Make sense? That's why chest one day, back the next, so you're not hitting the same group over again. Then you're hitting shoulders a few days after chest...spreading it all apart.

There are different routines, some people will do chest/back on one day, then legs, then shoulders/arms....or chest/tris(they work together), back/bis, and shoulders/legs.

There's not one right way, but I don't think hitting it all in one day will get you very good results.