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Strength training question


Laurie4b
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For those of you who regularly do strength training, I have a question about something that happened yesterday.

 

I've been doing bodyweight training. On Sat, I did my first 90 sec plank. I was so excited! (My best before had been 75 sec and I usually can only increase by 5 seconds.) Yesterday, Mon, I could only get to 60 seconds. :(

 

I've been doing push-ups in sets. On Sat, I had done 11-10-10. Mon I was due to do 11-11-10. I got the first set of 11 done, but on the second set, I could only get to 6. I eventually went back and got another set of 11, and one of 10, but nearly didn't make it.

 

Is it normal to sometimes have a significantly weaker day?  I wondered if I wasn't hydrated enough. I had been substitute teaching and it's a fine line between staying hydrated and not being able to leave the classroom to pee.

 

Anyway, I just wondered if that's a normal phenomenon.

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I've noticed that sometimes are just bad days and sometimes it is a sign that I need to take a couple days off, my muscles need some more recovery time. I find that after a couple days off I can much more likely achieve new levels then when hitting it every day. Now I have a mix, I usually hit it pretty hard Tues, Wed, Thurs and then try to do a couple day break somewhere in the other days, not off everything mind you but I've been working my shoulders very hard in yoga so I need to be conscious of having some recovery days in there. So, Sunday I pushed my shoulders really hard with a ton of chatarangas in yoga so yesterday I had about 2 hrs of active/exercise time but skipped all but 3 or 4 chatarangas in yoga class. I just had a different focus. I think that for the arms/shoulders  and those smaller muscles it seems I have to watch overtraining them more than I do my leg muscles.

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Thanks, everyone. That's good to know it's just a normal variation. I don't think I'm overtraining. I do bodyweight strength training MW and either F or Sat, depending on what is convenient. I do perform the moves to the point where I can't do another one, but I am not sore on my days off, so I've actually been wondering if I need to somehow up the ante or just stay the course.

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Totally normal. Your body may just still be recovering from your harder workout the previous day.

 

I also find that sometimes when I feel like certain bodyweight moves are harder than they were for me a few weeks/months ago, I'm not losing ground -- it's because my form has improved due to my increased strength. So I can squat lower, go deeper in a push-up, etc. without realizing it -- and that makes it feel harder. Took me a while to figure that one out. It's not as obvious as when you increase the amount of weight on the bar!

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Totally normal, but it can be discouraging, especially when you're still fairly new to a particular workout and have been excited about your progress until that point.

 

Sometimes it helps to take an extra rest day, just in case you have been overtraining a bit.

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