Gabe Mirkin, M.D.
You train for competitive sports by taking a hard workout,
which makes your muscles sore for the next day or two and then
when your muscles feel fresh again, you take another hard
workout. Every intense workout causes muscle damage and
soreness. Biopsies taken on the day after a hard workout from
the muscles of athletes show bleeding into the muscles and
disruption of the muscle fibers. If you try to exercise intensely
when your muscles are still sore from a previous workout, you
are at great risk for injuring yourself. Regular exercisers and
competitive athletes improve most with a weekly schedule that
includes one or two intense workouts and one longer session for
endurance. To prevent injury, they follow each of these three
harder workouts with easy workouts or days off.
Intense workouts cause far more muscle damage than
longer endurance workouts. That means that an athlete can
exercise harder on the day after an endurance workout than the
day after an intense one. So weightlifters should not lift weights
with the same muscle groups on the day after the one day a
week that they lift very heavy weights. Runners should run very
slowly on the days after the two days a week that they run very
fast. Most training programs include two intense workouts, say
Tuesday and Friday, followed by days of very easy workouts on
Wednesday and Saturday and a longer workout on Sunday
followed by a moderate workout on Monday.
May 1, 2006