Muscles not sore but tired?

lovelyfacex3

I workout everyday for at least an hour at a time. I've pushed myself hard, and I've noticed that I have little to no soreness or achy-ness afterwards or the following day. I have noticed that sometimes my muscles burn like I'm weight lifting or they feel tired. But it's not the typical "soreness" that people feel after they've worked out strenuously.

So 1. What do you think this feeling is? Is it bad?
2. If I'm not sore after my workouts is that bad? I really am pushing hard.

mariewithers

Thats lactic acid in your muscles, it's also a sign that you should give them a rest.

cjstrong

If you really are going every single day... lifting then that needs to change. You arent allowing your body to fully recover. Thus not able to hit it as hard as you could.

Try going only 4-5 days and taking a break between.

Also go lower reps for heavier weight. 1 hour in the gym is perfect.

If you're doing the same exercises switch it up. You really are not progressing if you are NOT getting sore

lovelyfacex3

So I should only do weight lifting a few times a week?

pkpzp228

My rule is that you can train any muscle/group as many times per week as you'd like so long as you're not training anything that's sore and you're able to stay injury free.

Most people will say not to train the same group more than 2, 3 times max per week but realistically muscle don't live on a weekly schedule and 7 days is arbitrary. Same goes for back to back days on the same group, if you're not sore than there's no reason why you can't work the same group again.

As per the question of not being sore, if you're not sore after working a muscle than your body has adapted to the routine and you need to modify if you're goal is to make continually gains.

My bottom line:
1) don't work a muscle group that's sore.
2) overtraining leads to injury
3) if you're not sore, explore different ways of impacting that muscle.

Edit: just so I'm not misunderstood, I'm not implying that gradual increases won't occur if you don't experience muscle soreness. Rather I strictly speaking from the standpoint of microtrauma and it's effect on muscle hypertrophy.

SirBen81

It could be several things:

(1) As pkpzp228 said, if you're working out the same muscles day after day then you may not be giving them enough time to recover. You may keep working out every day, but divide your muscles up throughout the week. For instance: Legs & Back on Monday, Shoulders & Arms on tuesday, Abs & Core on Wednesday...etc.

(2) As cjstrong stated, giving your body at least 1 full day of complete rest during the week rest is important. This is when your muscles will strengthen the most after having been "ripped" from working out.

(3) Lastly, a matter of nutrition. If you are on a low carb diet this may also explain the feeling of muscle fatigue. Doing a moderate-rigorous workout for longer than 20 minutes with muscles that have been denied carbs will not feel sore, but they will feel very fatigued as soon as their glycogen stores are empty(in general it takes about 20 minutes of moderate-rigorous activity for this to happen). To remedy this, try moving some of the carbs you eat during other times of the day to 30-60 minutes before your workout. This way when your muscles deplete their glycogen stores they can use these recently consumed carbs to fuel them.

Hope this helps.