As one commenter suggested, body weight exercises are said to be something you can do everyday without over-training. My last boss was a sports/conditioning coach who confirmed this for me. Attempting to do these every day will make you bloody sore. But another thing my boss told me was that I was getting that sore because I wasn't doing them every day. And that made a weird kind of sense. And for a while before my chest surgery I was doing body weight circuits every day that would incorporate exercises from the day before. So I would be sore in my chest/tris/shoulders from push ups the day before but I would still end up doing push ups the next day. I would just mentally feel disgusted at the thought of having to do them again. Its really intense but it is possible. If you give it a try just be careful and listen to what your body is saying. If you're just tired, you can kind of push past that. If you're getting shooting pains or any discomfort like that, just stop and rest for sure.
As for recovery, incorporate stretching into the end of your routine. I hate doing it myself because its boring as all hell but if I don't (especially with legs) I pay for it dearly. My next little piece of advice for soreness/recovery is to take cold baths/showers after a workout rather than hot ones. Hot bath = temporarily relief from helping with circulation. Cold bath = helps with inflammation which will occur from muscle tears and does a whole bunch of other stuff.
If you really are having a hard time with it, go for every other day and work your way up from there.
As another poster suggested, I would definitely work in some exercises for legs too. Even if that is just body weight squats.
I don't have a problem pushing past tiredness and soreness, I just have found myself doing worse (fewer reps) when I don't wait like 2+ days to recover. I was wondering if that means I am actually hindering my own progress unless I wait that long. Or if, on the other hand, I should keep doing it at least every other day and eating more protein. I will see how it goes...
Fewer reps per set then you normally do isn't entirely an indication that you're doing something wrong. It could just mean you're having a bad lift day. Like, some days I can do 5 or 6 pull ups, other days I can do 2. That often has a lot to do with how I slept or what I ate prior to that (if I ate at all). Could be that I didn't drink enough water or decided it was a good day to have 4 coffees before a workout (and that really bogs me down).
If I were in your situation and trying to go to failure doing push ups, I would do as many regular reps as I could and then begin doing kneeling push ups to complete the set or until I fail. This way, even though I'm tired, I'm still pushing. I often ended up doing that when I was doing pyramid push ups and trying to get used to them.
totally coming to this late (hiatus from lj for while)...
but i agree with those that said you can probably get away with doing BW exercises everyday. of course there will be soreness, but if you're not sore, you probably didn't work your muscles enough to grow or build strength.
if you've been doing the pushups/pullups every 2days and haven't seen much improvement after a few weeks, maybe just mix it up a bit? i'm also a fan of logging it all to see progress (or lack thereof) to see what's working and what's not...
example day 1 - 3 sets each to F day 2 - 5 sets of negatives for pullups (stand on chair, jump so chins over bar and slowly lower down. count of 5-10 or something. go to failure for each set) day 3 - 5 sets of pushups in various hand/foot positions (ie hands close together/elbows in so you hit inner chest/triceps more; wide hands or feet on chair, or hands against the wall and do slow negatives day 4 - rest
i'd also probably mix up the hand positions for pull/chinups... wide as you can go (you'll do less but it'll hit your lats nicely), regular grip palms away, palms facing you, if you can do hammer grip - palms facing each other - that'll hit your shoulders a bit more)
NOTE - suggesting doing pullup day before pushups b/c it sounds like this is your weaker excercise so you'll want more strength on that day - or less soreness - whereas you can probably gut out the pushups after 3 days in a row.
As for recovery, incorporate stretching into the end of your routine. I hate doing it myself because its boring as all hell but if I don't (especially with legs) I pay for it dearly. My next little piece of advice for soreness/recovery is to take cold baths/showers after a workout rather than hot ones. Hot bath = temporarily relief from helping with circulation. Cold bath = helps with inflammation which will occur from muscle tears and does a whole bunch of other stuff.
If you really are having a hard time with it, go for every other day and work your way up from there.
As another poster suggested, I would definitely work in some exercises for legs too. Even if that is just body weight squats.
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If I were in your situation and trying to go to failure doing push ups, I would do as many regular reps as I could and then begin doing kneeling push ups to complete the set or until I fail. This way, even though I'm tired, I'm still pushing. I often ended up doing that when I was doing pyramid push ups and trying to get used to them.
pyriamid push ups:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N40RLkDnG0o
Scott Herman actually has a lot of great at-home work out videos and is fairly encouraging.
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but i agree with those that said you can probably get away with doing BW exercises everyday. of course there will be soreness, but if you're not sore, you probably didn't work your muscles enough to grow or build strength.
if you've been doing the pushups/pullups every 2days and haven't seen much improvement after a few weeks, maybe just mix it up a bit? i'm also a fan of logging it all to see progress (or lack thereof) to see what's working and what's not...
example
day 1 - 3 sets each to F
day 2 - 5 sets of negatives for pullups (stand on chair, jump so chins over bar and slowly lower down. count of 5-10 or something. go to failure for each set)
day 3 - 5 sets of pushups in various hand/foot positions (ie hands close together/elbows in so you hit inner chest/triceps more; wide hands or feet on chair, or hands against the wall and do slow negatives
day 4 - rest
i'd also probably mix up the hand positions for pull/chinups... wide as you can go (you'll do less but it'll hit your lats nicely), regular grip palms away, palms facing you, if you can do hammer grip - palms facing each other - that'll hit your shoulders a bit more)
NOTE - suggesting doing pullup day before pushups b/c it sounds like this is your weaker excercise so you'll want more strength on that day - or less soreness - whereas you can probably gut out the pushups after 3 days in a row.
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