Can you work out if you're still sore from the previous lift?

[Joel]

My lifting partner was asking about going to the gym the following morning. I told him I was unsure since I was still feeling pretty sore. He asked if that mattered and I gave him the standard response I'd given myself over the years:

When you lift you tear your muscle down, you need to give them the appropriate amount of time to rebuild before doing it again.

As soon as I had said it aloud I thought, 'really?' So, I decided to do what anyone would do- google it.

Turns out, my assumption may not have been right. According to what I read in a Men's Health article, The Truth Behind 7 Muscle Myths (here: menshealth.com/mhlists/musc... 'active rest,' which includes light lifting, can actually be good for soreness since it increases blood flow and can clean out waste products.

The article advised doing high rep sets at about 30% of your one rep max.

Needless to say, we went to the gym.

[nautilus]

Another good thing to do would be to work a different set of muscles. For example if you predominantly worked on your legs one day, you could concentrate on upper body the next, like bench presses and dumbbells. That way you're not over stressing the sore muscles.

[Joel in reply to nautilus]

Yeah, that's a good point. I do try to do that (you can see my lifting plan here: healthunlocked.com/weight-t... ), but since I'm getting back into it I've got the problem of those muscles being sore from 2 workouts ago! It probably won't be a problem in the future (unless, of course, I fall off the wagon again), but a question that has come up a few times throughout my lifting life.

[healthyjoel Administrator]

I thought I'd leave a comment here to say that I'm the same person who wrote this post, but since that's my work account I thought I'd create a dedicated account for this community. I won't continue to post under two names!