Weekend training is as Good as playing Sunday cricket in the street one hardly concentrates on the sports skill and performance but play with passion. The rules are flexible and the end result does not add value to your vault of improvement. It's a reality and being a physician I come across in my medical practice that on every Tuesdays or Wednesdays there are few patients with injuries due to weekend sports like golf, cricket, kabbadi or heavy household work. This is because of unaccustomed muscles trained much after the recovery periods.
Once the muscle or muscle group is exerted with optimum load for the desired results then these muscles need rest for recovery for about 48 to 72 hours. The next workout must not be done before 48 hours and not after 72 to 96 hours. If the rest period is less than 48 hours then the muscles will get over trained and the muscles will get tired and may get injured. The muscles will never grow bigger and stronger with over training. On the other hand if the rest is more than 72 or 96 hours then the muscles will lose the total effects of exercise and they will never get accustomed to training.
There are many bodybuilders asking for good schedules. When I ask them about their schedules they disclose legs on Saturday after a full week on upper body is a routine. Almost everyone says that they complete the upper body in other 5 days and legs on 6th day. It's a complete imbalance of training that we train full upper body for 5 days and the other half (lower body) for 1 day only. Lower body makes 45% of the total body mass and musculature.
Big thigh muscle group quadriceps, biceps femoris, gluts and inner thigh muscles once trained with heavy load makes a complete metabolic change in our body. But the effects of this metabolic boost can only achieved if we train legs minimum 2 times or maximum 3 times a week. Big muscles need more and heavy exercise and need more rest to recover. But if there is over rest then the advantages of the good training can be lost. Over rest can also lead to unaccustomed muscles strains and stresses which may lead to injuries.
So legs are not Saturday sport, rather it should be a regular cyclic schedules. Otherwise on any good Saturday you may miss due to many avoidable and unavoidable reasons, causing drop of leg work out and you will end up with a good upper body but with poor base of pencil legs.
Dr. Randhir Hastir
