?'s about waiting in between workouts and different exercises.
I know when you're lifting weights your supposed to wait at least a day in between but when you're just doing push ups, squats and other exercises with your own body weight should you still wait a day in between or does it matter? Also what are the best exercises to do using just yourself? I just started doing planks, push ups, squats, lunges, crunches,oblique crunches, and tricep dips. Am I missing something? How many days a week can I do this?
You should give yourself a day to recover, even when doing bodyweight exercises (assuming that you're going to start adding weight as you get stronger!) Muscles grow and get stronger in *recovery* from weight lifting, not from weight lifting itself, so don't cheat yourself from your day off.
If you wanted to work out every day, you could alternate upper and lower body days: Like on MWF do squats, deadlifts, lunges and step ups, and TThS do your push ups, presses, planks, ab work and etc.
Part of the reason i was asking is because I am just starting to workout reglarly and my goal is three times a week for right now. No set days though because I have a 5 month old and watch 3 2 year olds during the day so sometimes its just too crazy. As far as adding weight I'm doing all this from home so I will probably just increase reps. Thanks for the response!
There are people who do things like push-ups every day, but they have generally been working out for a long time and are already quite fit. If it is new to you, especially if you are going to possibly do large numbers of them on the days you do them, then you should give yourself time to rest. As DietVet already suggested you can train your upper body one day and your lower body the next if you want. You can also alternate a full body strength training session with cardio work.
As for body weight exercises that you didn't list, there are the step-ups that DietVet mentioned, also calf raises, leg lifts, side planks, and pull-ups (these can be done assisted by a chair for beginners). There are probably more that I am not remembering. You can google for body weight exercises and if you check on youtube you can probably find videos of any of them that you aren't sure how to do. There are also lots of variations on many of the exercises (such as twisting planks). You can get lots of ideas from google and youtube. Just go slow and be careful.
^This is a good way to go. Lift weights every other day and use your rest day to do some light cardio. High intensity intervals are great for fat loss!
I'll just second (or third?) the idea about adding in cardio. I only do resistance training 2 or 3 days a week but I do cardio on the other days (I force myself to take a complete rest day once a week though). I always change up my cardio too because I'm kind of all over the place like that - just this week I've done running (I find hills and make up my own intervals as I go), swimming, spin class and a kickboxing-type class at the gym. Good news is that I'm never bored and my body doesn't get used to doing the same thing over and over!
?'s about waiting in between workouts and different exercises.
- just this week I've done running (I find hills and make up my own intervals as I go), swimming, spin class and a kickboxing-type class at the gym. Good news is that I'm never bored and my body doesn't get used to doing the same thing over and over!
