Is it OK to train a muscle which still has slight soreness?

[b4554]

I've been reading through a lot of posts with different discussions about soreness, but haven't found what I was looking for.

Is detrimental it to train a muscle that hasn't been trained in 3 or 4 or more days but maybe has some lingering light soreness (like especially from indirect use on days from compound exercises when other muscle groups were trained)?

Thanks in advance!!

 

[nevermore507]

good question. I did tri's/bi's on Sunday, and today was chest, but I was still a little sore. I trained anyway, but wanst sure if I wold be better off waiting another day. I was a little weaker on bench since my tri's still hurt a little, but I think I was actually less sore after my w/o. Be interested to see comments on your ?

 

[pmiller383]

Its ok to train a sore muscle, you just have to use some common sense. On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the most pain/soreness here is how I personally would decide what to do with that muscle
9-10 Stretch, Contrast shower, foam roll, massage. No direct lifting
6-8 Super high rep, light weight "feeder" sets to get blood to the muscle. Stretch/foam roll
3-5 Apply some extra liniment, dynamic stretch, extended warmup.
0-2 Dynamic stretch, apply liniment, stop being a poon and get to it.

This is my personal gauge, you may be a little different. After a 72 hours your muscles should be pretty damn close to recovered, if not you have to change your eatting and rest habits. If your chronically getting sore for 3-5 days after your training its time to rethink your training and cut anything that may be making recovery harder such as extended drop sets, rest pause sets, and overload eccentrics.

 

[pinchharmonic]

very subjective to the individual, but a VERY important topic to cover. I've been training for 12 years and one of things that keeps coming back time/time again is frequency for me. I like pmiller's numbering guide, though it can be difficult to figure out where you fall, but I overall agree.

On the standard split you hit a bodypart every 7 days. So if you hit legs monday, you'll hit em again the following monday. for me that doesn't work. Soreness lingers for different periods of time for all of my muscles, and if I don't hit that muscle immediately after it's not sore, then I make very little progress.

so if your chest takes 3 days to recover from soreness, then I'd really recommend you hitting it the 4th day, or even day 3 if the soreness is very residual.

there has been discussion of the actual DNA signaling from weight training, and they say that "signal" begins to wane after 72 hours. So some programs call for hitting the same bodypart within that 72 hours.

with that said, it's not so surprising that there are full body routines, half body routines, and even DC routines that are based around high frequency that work wonders for many people.

PS, one tip I've learned is this. If you are still sore after warming up, then don't do that body part. if you are no longer sore after a few warm up sets then you may be able to hit that bodypart again with great intensity.