why is it recommended you wait 2-3 days before working out muscles again but people in jobs like movers lift heavy things all day multiple days in a row?
In: Biology
The difference is that lifting weights for exercise entails pushing your muscles beyond what they have strengthened to endure. A mover is going to become accustomed to a certain amount of weight. They’re not going to lift anything too strenuous, heavier weights are going to be moved with mechanical assistance like carts and whatnot. So the mover is not and should never push their body to its limits if they’re doing their job at a pace that limits injury. While a lifter is going to constantly push their limits and that can lead to strain injuries if they push that hard too often.
Working out is designed to get you healthy. People with very physical jobs are trying to get things done.
People with very physical jobs often end up very beat up health wise. They are absolutely not the right people to emulate if your goal is to be healthy.
You CAN lift weights every day, but the optimum time is 2 or 3 days.
Day 1: strain muscles, micro bleeds.
Day 2: muscles repair bigger then before.
Day 3: start again.
By continually having micro bleeds, the repair takes longer and you are wasting time and effort on day 2.
You can train every day, you just need to adjust the volume. Train as much on one day as your body can regenerate in one day and your good to go.
I feel like it should be added that movers use team lift a lot to make the loads weigh less for themselves. This combined with proper lifting keeps things manageable.
That’s not to say I haven’t seen a man that weighed over 400 lbs lift something that was several hundred pounds for his job by himself but it was only once. His knees and back were not happy.
You could lift everyday and probably gain close the same amount of muscle or strength. However connective tissues have a far lower blood supply and repairs itself much more slowly. This is the reason people in physical jobs have a ton of injuries. These are generally overuse injuries like tendonitis, cartilage damage, etc – all connective tissue injuries. When not given enough rest these connective issues get inflamed and even separate from the muscle and/or the bone.
Because the greed for profit means that our society chews through worker’s bodies like grist in a mill. As long as the profit incentive exists, the ruling class will use our bodies until they break.
There are programs where you squat or bench everyday, however, the volume and weight is regulated such that you don’t accumulate too much fatigue throughout the week. However, if you go go hard and you need 2-3 days for recovery for a particular muscle group.
It’s because of the term “progressive overload”. Weightlifters are progressively overloading their muscles. Whether it’s more reps, more sets, more weight, more total weight moved in a workout, and/or less time between sets. But by overloading the muscle, you’re tearing the muscle, which requires time for it to repair. Hence the 2-3 day recommendation to wait while the muscle repairs.
When you go for a walk, you are using your muscles. But just by going for a stroll you are not progressively overloading the muscles required for walking. Your walking muscles are used to the load that you are requiring from them. People that work physical labour jobs will eventually get used to the load required for the work. It’s like walking to them. This is a simplification but it’s the ELI5 answer.
This is also one of the many reasons why some people can go to the gym every day but never gain muscle. It could be due to other factors as well, but if you’re going and doing the same workout over and over, you’re not going to get any bigger and eventually you won’t need 2-3 days to rest between workouts because it’s the new ‘normal’ for your body.
Most labor jobs don’t have people lifting over 100lbs. For most things over 50 lbs you will either use a dolly or a team lift. The lifting is repeated reps of relatively low weight. Before your body gets used to the workload of a manual labor job it would probably be a good idea to take rest days, but that might just not be practical.
Weightlifting is targeted lifts of higher weight. That trains the muscles to rebuild themselves stronger than before, but they need time to grow the new muscle fibers.
People in jobs like that are also destroying their back and joints, something you don’t want to replicate.
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