Soreness is a sign of a bad workout??

Ok, I really got busy with my workout routine yesterday & I hope I can stay motivated. I posted on here months ago about bulking but to be honest,I kept putting off excercising.2 days ago, I did Dumbbell Flyes,Incline Dumbbell Press
with a Two Arm Front Deltoid Dumbbell raises. I did about 7 sets with 10 reps with a pair of 25 lb dumbbells. I feel soreness in my arms & shoulders.Their not hurting to the point of pain but I just wanted to know.. Feeling soreness in the arms you worked on is a sign that it's trying to repair your muscles right?Also,should I wait until the pain go away before I start working on my arms again??
 
You don't need to feel sore in order to properly work the muscles. Its better to say that if you feel some stiffness after 24-36 hours, you worked hard enough.

Yes, wait until they aren't sore, tight, or stiff, before you work them again.
7 sets is too much if you haven't been working out. try 3 sets instead. and if you can do flyes with 25lbs, then you can incline press a whole lot more than 25lbs.
If you wanna bulk, go heavier, and keep reps no higher than 8. 6-8 is a good goal.
 
I think 25 lbs is fine for me now because those were heavy enough.But I am seriously out of shape. My arms are not rock hard.. They're flabby when you grab it.It seems like my appetite increases when I workout which is good because I need to eat alot to bulk. Problem is I don't know if I am eating enough. I know I have to eat about as many grams of protein as my weight. I know about calories,but I seriously don't have time to go write down what I am eating & calculate. Yesterday I ate like 3 helpings of spaghetti & meatballs & a sub sandwich earlier in the day. So I guess I'll work it out!
 
try for tracking calories. its easy, fast and free, but you do need to know the weight fo the foods you ate for proper calorie/nutrient counts.

The best thing to do is come up with about 10 meals, and just rotate through them all week long. This way you only have to really track stuff for a week, then you know where you're at, and you just repeat it every week.

About the weights: granted everyone is different, but I don't do more than 25lbs for flyes with dumbells...but for an incline dumbbell press, I'm picking up 55lb weights. YOu might not be close to that, but if you can do 25lbs PER ARM for incline flyes, but can't incline press more than 25lbs per arm, then you're cheating on the flyes, and you might hurt yourself.
With weights, everything, and i mean EVERYTHING is about form. if you cheat on form, you're cheating the benefits of doing the exercise, and in a lot of cases open yourself up to some really bad injuries, especially in the shoulders and back (and an easy way to cheat on flyes is to use a lot of shoulder muscle).

Don't mean to lecture, just don't wanna see you get hurt, and wanna make sure you're pushing yourself, so you'll see the effect it has on your physique.
 
Thanks alot!! I really appreciate your time & effort over a stranger. I can probably send you a picture of my overall body, physique to show you how my body looks as of now! When I flex, it shows alot of muscle.. Just wish it could stay that way without flexing.. But the attachment I have is my body's current state as of right now
 
well at least yer not fat like I am right now!

with a body like yours, you probably don't have to worry about eating too much. the food is really whats going to make you add muscle, and give you the energy to lift heavy. I think you'll be surprised at how quickly you move up in weight used for the first month or two.
 
the soreness is probably caused by lactic acid that built up during the exercises. try stretching your muscles, or hey, even a bit of cardio would help get rid of it. the more fit you get, the less stiffness or pain you will feel the day after
 
Weight Gain

Weight gain is a matter of consumption and use. If you are consuming just enough Fat, Carbs, and protien to support you current weight then you will not gain any weight, I believe that you are looking for mass not pure weight. muscule gain is diffrent from person to person. physiology and build. you need to try diffrent things and diffrent mothods to see what works for you. If you are properly execting the fly movement with a 25 pound weight then you should be able to press more than that on the incline. Unless of course your routine is geared only toward your chest musclues. If you cannot lift more than a 25 pound dumbell on incline then you need to focus hard on your triceps and shoulders. It seems to me that you are focusing too hard on your pecks and not the ancillary muscules. And a little side not most people after a work out look bigger and more ripped than the day after. Even pros look soft in the off season bulking phases of the year.
 
Your sore simply as a result of DOMS. Blood lactate accumulation is utilized as an energy source (and thusly gone) within 1-2 hours after you're out of the gym. So, being sore the next day has nothing to do with lactic acid. Typically DOMS is an indicator (somewhat) of overworking a muscle group, which isn't always a bad thing.
 
Lactic acid is a general term

The expression "lactic acid" is used most commonly by athletes to describe the intense pain felt during exhaustive exercise and has been an accepted explination for a long time. The term DOMS (Delayed onset muscule soreness) is also a general term and the cause of DOMS is still not absolute.( neither is Lactic Acid). There are many schools of thought and research on this subject. If you search the web you will find many explinations of what causes DOMS. From fluid buildup near the nearve endings to Protien breakdown. There is no perfect science on this issue DOMS is a better general term for the phenomenon but it is also too general and not widley accepted as absolute. If you read the major magazines there are still articles being published on Lactic acid or lactate. as recent as last month, because it is still the most widley accepted explination of DOMS. Although it is in contradiction to recent studies and research. The real problem is that we really do not know diffinitivley what the cause of DOMS is other than working out.
 
I don't mean to hijack the thread, but I thought I would ask since this is along the same lines as what I'm dealing with.

I worked my biceps, lats and traps on Monday and even today (Thursday), I can barely extend my arm out fully without there being extreme tightness and pain where the bend is (I'm thinking where your tyndons connect the bicep with forearm muscles?). I have decided to skip going to the gym and doing any exercises that will require using my arms for lifting, so that they can rest well, if they aren't feeling better by tomorrow or Saturday, I think I'll visit the doctor and have a look.

And on the other subject of the thread, I too am a fairly thin guy, the only "fat" I really have is my stomach area, which is mainly due to the fact that I have a desk job now and for the past 3yrs, I haven't done exercise really at all. So I'm thinking that worrying about what I eat, isn't as big a problem as I thought, since if I spend even 3 nights doing cardio in the gym, I notice the "bulge" go down tremendously and it starts to go flat again. Not to say I should go out and just eat fast food all day and night, but since I have the higher metabolism and it's obvious that not doing any cardio was what was causing me to get the fat around the stomach, would it be safe to say that I can go ahead and keep eating more than I have been? Because to be honest, I'm EXTREMELY hungry if I eat just a few small meals a day and one large one in the evening.

(also - To get the "V" shape at the very bottom of your abdomin that they call the "Crotch V", couldn't you just do lots of leg lifts to start getting that?)
 
Slopitch said:
If you read the major magazines there are still articles being published on Lactic acid or lactate.

However, unless you're reading peer-reviewed journals, your best bet is to catch information over at instead of the major magazines out there.
 
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