You’ve been hitting the snooze button every morning you were supposed to go to the gym. Until one day, you get up and make your way down there, congratulations! You finally took that significant first step.
Only to find yourself overwhelmed by the substantial amount of information and end up spending half an hour on the treadmill instead.
Because you didn’t know where to start with any other exercise.
Don’t worry we’ve got you.
Today, we’re excited to have fitness expert and personal trainer Mel Sidki here with us to answer some of the most pressing questions every newbie wished they knew before starting their fitness journey. This will be part one of our question and answer session with Mel and we’re excited for more to come.
Q: Should I train when I’m sore?
Delayed onset muscle soreness is the pain and stiffness we feel in our muscles after our bodies undertake any unfamiliar exercise.
After a workout, our muscles are trying to repair and adapt to prevent muscle damage. Although muscle soreness will decrease as your body adapts to a new exercise the more you train but, it is extremely important that within the 24-72 hour period after training we have to remember that our muscles have undergone enormous amounts of tear and stress, therefore it is extremely important that we rest our muscles not only for optimal recovery but also to prevent injury.
Q: How often should I lift weights?
It very much depends on your goal, when you want to achieve it and the time you can commit to training.
Let's say you’re new to working out and your goal is to lose excess fat and become stronger and fitter. In this situation, you should ensure that your weight sessions should be focused more on compound lifts such as the squat, lunge, deadlift, push up, pull up and press whilst ensuring that you are targeting every major muscle group in the body.
In order to establish your weight training sessions, you need to first establish how you are going to split your sessions throughout your week so that you don’t end up overworking your muscles which will do more harm than good. This would translate to around 3 weight training days and at least 2 days of steady state cardio per week.
If you have any more questions, please fell free to email us with subject #AskMel and we’ll be sure to answer them in our next blog post.