If you re talking about so-called delayed onset muse soreness (aka. DOMS) then do not be afraid of working out whilst sore but rather, take confidence from the fact that stretching and blood flow will help your muscles recover.

I ve attached source material on DOMS

 

If you are feeling sore after 72 hours you are increasing weight / number of reps too fast. You should NOT just be arbitrarily increasing in each workout until near “the point of failure”. 

You need to have a fixed number of sets, reps per set, and weight and stick to that until you find your workout to be easy, and then you increase the weight to the next increment available. 
 

For example, I usually do 10 X 5 for every exercise (5 sets, 10 reps per set). Note that in between sets you should take a small break before moving to the next set.  I have found the 5 X 10 model to be good for most weight based exercises. The caveat is for abs in particular things such as crunches you may want to increase reps as you become used to lower rep set as the weight you are allowed to increase to is limited depending on the gym (I’ve seen medicine balls stop at 12 pounds).

Additionally, consistency in the days you go is important. I would aim for M/W/F upper body and T/H legs/cardio. You can substitute a weekend day in there if you want although it is important not to workout the same muscle group back to back. You should not be sore on your next workout day  when following this schedule. Personally, when I increase the weight sometimes I am sore for no more than 24 hours. If you are sore for longer than that take a break and then decrease the weight once your soreness goes away. Keep that in mind and make sure to not increase the weight as fast in the future. In the beginning you will make such mistakes but over time you’ll get a good feel for your body and when it’s time to increase. Always be conservative in when you increase. 

Note since you are starting out, I would recommend doing the minimum possible weight for every exercise on the 5 X 10 model. It sounds like a joke , but because it is 50 total reps (with small breaks in between) you might not even be able to finish it at first. You should slowly try to build toward 5 X 10. Only once you can do every exercise for that day with relative ease should you be increasing weight for any exercise, and when you increase it should be the next increment (min + 5 , min + 10, or min + 20) which is dependent on the exercise and machine you use. 
 

Even with all this weight lifting is a fairly slow journey (especially without steroids). It will take a bit of time (8 -12 months) before people really start to notice your gains. Hopefully you end up finding you personally enjoy it outside of others compliments. Personally, I have found it to be one of the few “manly” things I do as a white collar worker and I intrinsically enjoy it.

Best of luck and feel free to ask more questions.

P.S. Something I forgot to add is that good sleep and food is critical for your body to recover. Poor sleep / bad food is a recipe for disaster and if it’s something you can’t control adjust your workout expectations significantly downward.

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Most Helpful

Fantastic advice. While I don't do 5x10, I'm pretty similar with a 4x12 stack, so only two reps off you. I can personally vouch for the SLOW journey of gaining/losing weight (whichever you're attempting to do). I believe that proper recovery, muscle distribution, and other benefactors such as sleep/food will serve one FAR better than making it your life goal to bench two plates.

I "worked out" a lot in college, but never seemed to get the body that I wanted due to inconsistency, bolstered ego, and lifting so I could tell people I lifted. I was always driving for aesthetic gains, and lacked the discipline/commitment to understanding that lifting for strength should come first, then aesthetics second. This eventually led me to stop working out entirely, and I spent my first 2-3 years after college feeling like shit and maybe seeing the inside of a weight room once. 

After I graduated from b-school, I decided to restart completely. I hired a personal trainer for the first six months in order to get myself into a groove and maintain that it's the most outstanding choice I've ever made athletic-wise. The first thing he told me echos your point, and I've lived by it gym-wise: "KILL YOUR EGO." My first time benching was with the bar alone, and I was self-conscious of the guys next to me that were easily repping 225 while I was struggling to get the bar over the top of my head. We spent the first 2-3 weeks working on consistency, recovery, and form. The rest is history. 

To OP, follow the above commenter's advice, and just take it slow. You will do yourself no service by pumping up weight to show off and will feel so much better knowing that you COMPLETED an entire workout. This is not me insinuating that you're doing this, I just want to caution folks that lifting improperly can be very dangerous and present harm if you don't know what you're doing. I didn't clip a plate right into a trap bar and ended up pinching a nerve in my shoulder when I was deadlifting in college after the plates fell off the left side and yanked my right arm down to counter. Lots of oxycodone and pain for six weeks. 

Best of luck to you in your lifting journey. Get huge!

 

We have strikingly similar journeys, although slightly different timelines.

The first thing he told me echos your point, and I've lived by it gym-wise: "KILL YOUR EGO." My first time benching was with the bar alone, and I was self-conscious of the guys next to me that were easily repping 225 while I was struggling to get the bar over the top of my head. We spent the first 2-3 weeks working on consistency, recovery, and form

I can 100% relate to this, and even worse being the competitive natured person that I was (and many on this site are), I would feel a sense of pride if I was able to do more weight than the person before me (whether it be machines or actual weights), and a sense of shame if I had to alter the weight down. Because of this, I found myself trying ot increase weight too quickly and ultimately sacrificing form for weight. For example for curls I would start the curl midway and not stand straight properly, but then still go ahead and brag to my friends that I could "curl X weight". I did get some results, but they were obviously not as good.

I don't know what sparked it but I believe as I matured in college my interest dramatically shifted from bragging about a certain weight, and focusing on form instead. I had to swallow pride and start with the minimum weight again, but this time I was focusing on making sure I had the full range of motion when doing a certain exercise. While the journey to increase weight was much slower, I started to actually enjoy weight lifting intrinsically. Before I only experienced a brief moment of happiness when I increased to the next weight level or a fleeting sense of pride when I could lift more than the person before me. Now that I had changed the measure of success to consistency and form, I was always successful so long as I showed up to the gym and did the exercises properly. This made me happier and I started to develop a greater appreciation for each excercise and how it impacted my muscle group. Hormonally I also begin to feel much more "manly" when doing the exercises properly which to me is mildly addictive. 

While progress was slower, like the tortoisse and the hare suddenly by the 8 month mark I had to buy larger shirts and pants. The gains were quite pronounced to the point where friends who I hadn't seen in a few months begin to ask me if I was lifting and pointed it out. It really made me realize for the first time that the story of the tortoise and the hare is a great analogy to weightlifting.

Unfortunately, the story does not end there. Like you a few years later I quit. The combination of stressful work and Covid made me to rationalize not going to the gym or eating healthy. As a result my health suffered. They say you only appreciate something fully once you lose it, and I had not realized the dramatic impact weightlifting had on my physical health and mental sharpness. Additionally, I lost my figure and even started to develop a belly (as someone who had abs in college this was a dramatic shift).

To make a long story short, I came to a difficult place where I decided that weightlifting and dieting had to be a consistent non-negotiable in my life, even at the expense of changing my career trajectory. In the past months, I've gotten back to working out and have managed to lose the belly. I expect it to be another several months before I start to see real progress again in terms of gaining muscle. While I've rediscovered my happiness with weightlifting, I have had a lingering sense of depression mostly because I feel that I wasted a few years in fitness and should have stuck to it. They say hindsight is 20/20 but sometimes I blame myself for imagining I could "do it all" post college from a career and fitness standpoint. It's extremely refreshing to read how you too had a gap and a freefall in terms of fitness before picking yourself back up after the MBA. I think for those of us who have both an interest in fitness and a high-paying job, it was easy to naively think in college that we could manage both easily, and then the job actually hits and being unprepared we sacrifice the fitness piece without anticipating the changes that would occur from such a decision. 

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I think over time with working out you begin to learn which type of sore is a healthy sore. You start to get a general feel for you body and what it needs to grow and be faster and stronger and how much rest you need. Typically, you can do some type of cardio and abs every day if you want to be super shredded. 

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 
monkey795

Is it best to workout when you're a bit sore? Purely from a muscle-building perspective. I give each muscle group 72 hours to recover however I'm always a bit sore because I train to failure or near failure on most sets.

Question for experienced lifters - are you always a bit sore?

What are you training for? What is your ideal body type?

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

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