Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

Hi guys, I'm in a little bit of a dilemma deciding how OFTEN to drop by the gym. When I do drop by it, I usually spend about an hour on all my main muscle groups; and I do feel kinda stiff/aching the next day, but in a good way.

Currently, I'm thinking of going down on mondays, wednesdays, and fridays, with days in between for recovery and the weekend off. But sometimes I still find myself aching on the 2nd day after a workout; so for instance, if I worked-out on monday and I'm still a little sore on wednesday, should I still go down or rearrange my entire schedule. (that means not sticking to the rigid monday, wednesday and friday schedule, but rather, going down only when I feel like it.) Because when I don't actually have a rigid schedule, I find myself slacking off or wasting too much time, only to realize later that I can't find the time to head down to the gym!

And also, I've been hearing a lot of things about muscle mass vs muscle strength(size vs functional ability), so what's all this about and what would be the difference in workout regimes for a person trying to build 'strength' compared to a person trying to bulk up?

At the moment, my workouts currently consist of 5 sets of 10 reps on each muscle group, at 70% of the maximum weight I can do on that specific machine (maximum as in; I can only do it once before I drop)

PS: I do light cardio during rest days.

Thanks a lot =D

You might want to try splitting up your muscle groups to allow more recovery time. I usually will do something like a "push" workout (Triceps, chest, shoulders, mostly bench work and dips), a "pull" workout (more biceps and back, curls/pullups, bent over rows, etc), and a leg workout. That way you can pound on each muscle group more and give them more time for recovery. It works REALLY well for me because I typically schedule a leg workout before a day off, so that if I'm too sore to walk around a do a lot, it's not that big a deal. Good luck.

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I'm voting for a split routine too. More recovery time and a chance to work harder on each muscle group.

What I've been doing recently is splitting into (in this order) -
legs + abs day, upper body day, cardio day, rest day x repeat
This way I'm getting a legs' days of rest between the legs and cardio so it doesn't hurt and 3 days rest before working the same muscle group again.

I guess you need to figure how much rest you need and what fits your daily schedule to decide.


I think what you're talking about when saying different kinds of strength is endurance vs concentrated effort.
Like rock climbing, rowing a boat etc vs weight lifting. But I doubt that 8 vs. 15 reps at the gym actually makes much of a difference in those fields, as they are significantly longer in duration.

thanks for the advice