If I never feel like taking rest days, does it mean I’m not working out hard enough?

[Odifududix]

Never feel fatigue or DOMs outside the gym. I do get bad days on occasion but not feeling like chit.

I train full body 3x a week. For most lifts, I just do 3 sets of 8-10 reps. Never had issues increasing reps or adding in weight to the bar weekly.

Any reason why I *shouldn't* take a rest day? For the longest time, I worked with low rep sets and made minimal size gains yet my strength shot up. Took my squat to 340 lbs and bench to 165 lbs (pretty bad but I had hormone issues; tbf I couldn’t bench an empty bar to save my life my first MONTH)

[health4life24]

No it doesn’t mean you’re not training hard enough.

I train 6 days a week and only take 1 day off per week, and occasionally I may even do some cardio, yoga or abs on my scheduled rest day.

It could be you just love being in the gym. Working out can make you feel good mentally, make you feel more positive, etc.

The way I see it is you should listen to your body.

I actually once went a couple weeks with training 7 days per week with no rest days and continued to make consistent progress, lifts going up, etc. and by the end of it I didn’t feel too burnt out or anything. Typically though I will take 1 rest day per week, that was a unique situation.

Rest days should be dependent on what you feel you require to be able to grow, make progress and recover. There is no set standard as to how many you have to take. It is entirely an individual thing.

Experiment and figure out what your sweet spot is. For some people that may mean taking a couple rest days, for others it may only be 1-2, etc.

[Odifududix]

So apparently the bros who bench everyday with big chests were onto something

[Duplicitous]

The way I see it is you should listen to your body.

Rest days should be dependent on what you feel you require to be able to grow, make progress and recover. There is no set standard as to how many you have to take. It is entirely an individual thing.

Experiment and figure out what your sweet spot is. For some people that may mean taking a couple rest days, for others it may only be 1-2, etc.

+1.

I went 6-7 days per week for years and my rest days were always active rest days (walking, hiking). At other times in my life, work got really crazy and I was working 16-18 hour shifts, so 4 days was all my body could handle.

[health4life24]

So apparently the bros who bench everyday with big chests were onto something

There is no right or wrong answer here. It’s entirely dependent on what works for you.

What type of spit setup you are running does come into play here though. If you’re doing full body 3 days a week you’re already hitting everything 3x per week. I’m sure it may have been talked about before somewhere or some studies might have been done, but I’m not very familiar with people running full body routines more than 3 days because I don’t do full body.

Some people will say if you don’t take a certain number of rest days or you use a certain amount of volume you must not be training hard but I disagree with those assumptions because not everyone is the same.

I’m not going to really comment on doing full body more than 3 days but if you’re interested in that maybe do some research, or actually try it out. The other thing is if you want to be in the gym more and you think doing full body more than 3 days a week might be too taxing you could switch to a different routine. Just a thought.

Again, ultimately this all comes back to trial and error and actually applying different training principles in your workouts for a period of time and evaluating your results to see what works best.

[Odifududix]

+1.

I went 6-7 days per week for years and my rest days were always active rest days (walking, hiking). At other times in my life, work got really crazy and I was working 16-18 hour shifts, so 4 days was all my body could handle.

Were you doing a body part split or full body? If the latter, then good god i have potential to recover

[air2fakie]

I train full body 3x a week.

= 4 rest days per week. I don't understand this post at all.

[health4life24]

= 4 rest days per week. I don't understand this post at all.

I think what he’s saying is he doesn’t always want to take those 4 rest days, he feels like being in the gym more often and training more.

[air2fakie]

I think what he’s saying is he doesn’t always want to take those 4 rest days, he feels like being in the gym more often and training more.

Got it, thanks. OP tends to have a "grass is always greener" view so it gets confusing.

I made the mistake of going to the gym too frequently and I wasn't recovering enough even with the extra calories. In addition, I focused too much on improving my "one rep max" while deep down I just wanted hypertrophy.

OP, give it more than 2 weeks and judge it by whether you're achieving your goal of hypertrophy, not by whether you feel like taking rest days or not.

[Farley1324]

Never feel fatigue or DOMs outside the gym. I do get bad days on occasion but not feeling like chit.

I train full body 3x a week. For most lifts, I just do 3 sets of 8-10 reps. Never had issues increasing reps or adding in weight to the bar weekly.

Any reason why I *shouldn't* take a rest day? For the longest time, I worked with low rep sets and made minimal size gains yet my strength shot up. Took my squat to 340 lbs and bench to 165 lbs (pretty bad but I had hormone issues; tbf I couldn’t bench an empty bar to save my life my first MONTH)

If and when you get stronger you'll understand better the need for rest days.

Should you follow an actual established and proven program, you stand a better chance of getting stronger and then realizing the value of the rest days

Or, if you cut the rest days out long enough even at current levels, you just might see a lack of progress/negative progress

[ezra76]

A lot of variables. I need more rest than that but I'm 44yrs. old and I also am training right on the cusp of strength/hypertrophy. 4x6 on compounds and use enough weight I fail the last rep (rep 24 of total) or move to 3x8 same weight next workout when I succeed. CNS and joints could not handle 6x a week of that.

[health4life24]

A lot of variables. I need more rest than that but I'm 44yrs. old and I also am training right on the cusp of strength/hypertrophy. 4x6 on compounds and use enough weight I fail the last rep (rep 24 of total) or move to 3x8 same weight next workout when I succeed. CNS and joints could not handle 6x a week of that.

I agree and disagree. I too incorporate lower rep sets on BOTH compounds and isolations but I go all the way down to the 1-3 rep max range, 6 days per week. With higher rep hypertrophy sets in addition to the lower rep strength sets. Increasing weight and reps weekly.

For some people the CNS might not be able to handle it, but others may be able to. This has to be an individual thing, it's impossible to know exactly what the OP could or couldn't handle, it's something they have to figure out through trial and error. Not everyone recovers the same or is able to handle the same amount of total workload.

Just because someone is doing something that isn't part of a proven program or in the norm of what most lifters does doesn't mean it doesn't work for them or doesn't deliver results.

People here sometimes seem to think that just because someone is taking less rest days or doing high volume they must not be training hard or using heavy weight and I don’t think that’s a good assumption to be making.

[TAWS6]

If and when you get stronger you'll understand better the need for rest days.

Yup. Once he's squatting 340 for reps and benching 250+ for reps he will be looking forward to rest days lol. Its a lot easier to skip the rest days when you're moving lighter weight.

[ezra76]

I agree and disagree. I too incorporate lower rep sets on BOTH compounds and isolations but I go all the way down to the 1-3 rep max range, 6 days per week. With higher rep hypertrophy sets in addition to the lower rep strength sets. Increasing weight and reps weekly.

For some people the CNS might not be able to handle it, but others may be able to. This has to be an individual thing, it's impossible to know exactly what the OP could or couldn't handle, it's something they have to figure out through trial and error. Not everyone recovers the same or is able to handle the same amount of total workload.

Just because someone is doing something that isn't part of a proven program or in the norm of what most lifters does doesn't mean it doesn't work for them or doesn't deliver results.

People here sometimes seem to think that just because someone is taking less rest days or doing high volume they must not be training hard or using heavy weight and I don’t think that’s a good assumption to be making.

It's what I've tried, failed and injured myself doing. So for me, more rest is needed. I did 3 reps on standing military press yesterday, for 6 sets. I wanted my 24 reps but on set 7 on failed on rep 2.

I'm still on that "RPE 10" mode working out. Well, 9.5 on bench/squat since I don't have a spotter.

[health4life24]

It's what I've tried, failed and injured myself doing. So for me, more rest is needed. I did 3 reps on standing military press yesterday, for 6 sets. I wanted my 24 reps but on set 7 on failed on rep 2.

I'm still on that "RPE 10" mode working out. Well, 9.5 on bench/squat since I don't have a spotter.

Well yeah it definitely isn’t necessarily something everyone should be doing and if you’ve experienced injury good for you for knowing what you can and can’t recover from safely.

[ezra76]

Yup. Once he's squatting 340 for reps and benching 250+ for reps he will be looking forward to rest days lol. Its a lot easier to skip the rest days when you're moving lighter weight.

I'm not moving that much yet but trying to. It's a different ballgame when you are training for strength vs. hypertrophy. There is literally no point in trying for more because you know it will be counterproductive. When you haven't even gotten to your working set and already like "wtf is going on today?" you realize.

[TAWS6]

I'm not moving that much yet but trying to. It's a different ballgame when you are training for strength vs. hypertrophy. There is literally no point in trying for more because you know it will be counterproductive. When you haven't even gotten to your working set and already like "wtf is going on today?" you realize.

I think once my squat work sets got over 365lbs it would take me 45 mins to get through everything (warming up, stretching, ect). Which at that point you're energy for leg pressing, leg curls ect is gone. Then you run into the problem of once you're not adding weight to the bar you're not really growing. Its depressing lol.

[Duplicitous]

Were you doing a body part split or full body? If the latter, then good god i have potential to recover

Body part split. It was quite a few years ago, but it was either 3 or 4 day split.

[Farley1324]

I think once my squat work sets got over 365lbs it would take me 45 mins to get through everything (warming up, stretching, ect). Which at that point you're energy for leg pressing, leg curls ect is gone. Then you run into the problem of once you're not adding weight to the bar you're not really growing. Its depressing lol.

Yeah a couple years ago we went to Disney on vacation and I got up at like 5AM and squat 365x4x4 before spending the day in the park and yeah there was no asking people "do I need a rest day?"

And that was the only lift I did that day lol

[SubWooferCooker]

I have trained full body for weeks, months without a single rest day on and off for years now mostly the only time I'm not doing this is while cutting, i have spoken about it lots of times on here in the past.

You can train full body everyday even with heavy weight and not need a rest day, however it takes a while for your body to adapt to this way of training, Most people will try it for a week or two and they WILL need a rest day, performance will tank and they will feel over trained. They will then draw the conclusion that it doesn't work. WRONG, Its like running, when you first start running you can not run everyday without your legs becoming sore and your performance tanking. It took me 5 months before i could run everyday consistently without needing a rest day, and lifting full body every day is the same. I don't remember exactly how long it took me before i could lift everyday without a rest day for weeks, months at a time because i have been doing it for YEARS. but when i first started i could only do a few day's before performance would drop and i felt like i needed a rest day but once my body adapted i never got sore and i started to make consistent progress and gains and i looked forward to every work out and i would rarely ever take a rest day. Mostly the only times i would ever take a rest day would be after a night where i got poor sleep or something.

check out some old posts by user 7399martyn from a few years ago , he's a power lifter with some very impressive lifts and he trained full body everyday for a long time at one point, gained a boat load of strength in the process and he was jacked.

With all that said, i have no idea if training everyday is actually better for gains, **** it may even be worse who knows, i just love to train, its like therapy for me and that's the only reason i train this way really. i wouldn't even recommended it, its not necessary, i would only advise it if you truly love to train and enjoy it, never do this if you feel like you NEED to or you should.

[TolerantLactose]

he means 3 times a week

Do you math?