Can I Lift Weights Every Day (Effects)

A lot of people enjoy going to the gym and doing all kinds of physical activities. Some people enjoy more cardio exercises, while others enjoy lifting different weights.

When it comes to lifting weights, it not only gives you bigger muscles, but it helps improve weight loss, heart health and support healthy joints.

Can I Lift Weights Every Day (Effects)

It might be tempting to lift weights every day, and you may have wondered if you could get away with doing that. In this article, we will be discovering if you can lift weights every day and the effects of lifting weights every day.

Bigger And Stronger Muscles

Lifting weights every day can help you build bigger and stronger muscles. Depending on your training goals, you may have a lifting routine, that could be daily or weekly. Your goals will mean you have a different routine with weight training.

For example, someone who just wants to lift heavy weights will have a different workout routine compared to someone who just wants to develop bigger muscles.

You need to know what your goal is. Do you want to lift weights because you want huge muscles, or because you want to hit a new personal weight record?

Depending on your overall goal for why you want to lift weights, the program that you do will slightly overlap but vary on volume, rest, and intensity.

This is due to the muscle fibers you are working on, and how you work them will differ depending on your goal.

Muscle Fibers

Speaking of muscle fibers, it is important to go over the two main types of fibers that you have in your muscles.

  • Type 1 is known as slow-twitch. These fibers need a steady supply of oxygen intake to opportate during any endurance exercise or activities. These could include activities such as swimming, running, or cycling.
  • Type 2 is known as fast-twitch. These muscle fibers are what you use the most during weight training. They are used during explosive movements, like lifting heavy weights. These fibers are also used when type 1 muscle fibers cannot work alone.

As a result, to make your type 1 muscle fibers stronger, you can train them by lifting weights. You should follow a higher rep range, but at a lower intensity. A lower rep range at a higher intensity will help you train your type 2 muscle fibers.

Therefore, lifting weights every day can help you achieve your power and strength goals.

Although, it is important to let your muscles recover properly. Therefore, if you are going to train every day, we would recommend training a different muscle group every day. This is because your muscles need time to recover.

Remember To Recover

Again, it comes down to your goals, but if you want to build muscle endurance, then you need to let your muscles recover for at least 24 hours between workouts. While if you are power or strength training, then your muscles need 48 to 72 hours to recover between workouts.

This is because when you are training, you are tearing muscle fibers. This is nothing to worry about and is part of the process of growing your muscles.

Hence, this is another reason why you should train the same muscle group day after day. Your muscles require time to heal after tearing, so they rebuild and grow bigger.

Therefore, you can lift weights every day, which will help you to grow bigger and stronger muscles. However, you need to create a routine for yourself, so you aren’t constantly working the same muscle groups. Otherwise, your muscles will never have time to recover.

An example of a routine to follow could be the following:

  • Monday - Chest
  • Tuesday - Legs
  • Wednesday - Back
  • Thursday - Arms
  • Friday - Shoulders

The idea is to let one muscle group recover, while you work on another muscle group.

Strong Bones

By lifting weights every day, not only can you get stronger muscles, but it helps your bones stay strong. As you get older, you begin to lose 3 to 5% of your muscle mass every day after the age of 30 years old. By losing this muscle mass, your chances of falls and fractures increase.

However, by lifting weights every day, you can prevent this. You will want to focus on strength training exercises that focus on your type 2 muscle fibers. As most of the muscle mass that you lose affects your type 2 muscle fibers.

As a result, by regularly lifting weights, your bones will adapt to the new stress that they are being placed under. Therefore, as you gradually increase the weight, your bones will continue to adapt. However, you should slowly increase your weight to avoid any injuries.

Weight Loss And Burning Fat

Lifting weights every day can help you to burn fat and reduce your overall body fat, which then helps you lose weight. By lifting weights, you are building leaner muscles, and increasing your metabolism.

Research shows that muscles burn more calories when they are resting than fat. They will go on to burn more calories after the workout is completed, for up to 48 hours. Anyone who constantly weights trains, will see a range of physiological changes.

These can include increased bone density and lean body mass. It also results in your body fat decreasing, as you will be burning large amounts of calories.

The reason why you burn calories even after your workout is complete is due to a process known as a workout after-burn. After working your body hard, by lifting weights, your body needs more oxygen afterward to restore your metabolism. This process then causes you to burn more calories.

If you want to increase your workout after-burn, then alongside your everyday lifts try some compound exercises with short rest intervals.

These compound exercises target multiple muscle groups at once. This means you will be working more muscles in just one exercise, alongside lifting.

Hence, lifting weights every day can help you burn more calories and decrease your overall body fat mass.

Results Are Minimal

While we have spoken about some good things that can happen from lifting weights every day, it isn't all good news. If you do lift weights every day you are increasing your chances of injuries by overtraining.

When anyone works out they need to have the right balance of exercise, sleep, diet, and recovery. By lifting weights every day, you may not be finding the balance that you need.

To begin with, you may see results, but after a while, you may find little to no change as you are working your body too hard.

As we have discussed above, you need to rest, to help your body to recover properly. We would recommend that you rest between one and two days between your weight training sessions.

You also want to vary which muscle groups you are targeting in each weight training session. You want to make sure that you are allowing each muscle group plenty of time to recover.

If you do hit a stage, where you are seeing no to little changes, then this is a sign that you may be overtraining. This is because your body isn’t getting the rest that it requires.

If this does happen then you should rethink your training plan. Try to have a simple plan and take your rest days seriously.

If you still want to be active on your rest day, yoga or light stretching are both great ways to ease sore muscles. They also promote healing and keep you active.

So, by lifting weights every day you may see improvements, to begin with. However, it is very easy to overtrain and then all your work will be for nothing.

Injury

If you do lift weights every day, then you can be more at risk of contracting an injury. This is why recovery days and varying the muscle groups that you train are so important.

Otherwise, if you do overtrain and focus on the same muscle groups consecutively, then this can lead to muscle overuse injuries.

An example of a muscle overuse injury includes bicep tendonitis. This can happen from training too frequently and the same repetitive movement. Also, improperly loading the joint can cause issues.

If you don’t warm up or move too quickly into a heavy load, this can cause injury. If you are new to weight training, then we could advise having a trainer to make sure that you are lifting the weights correctly. Your form is critical because if you have poor form, this can also lead to injuries.

Therefore, by lifting weights every day, you do risk the chance of causing yourself an injury.

Final Thoughts

People may lift weights every day for different reasons, but these reasons will come down to their fitness goals.

While you can lift weights every day as they help you lose weight and gain stronger muscles and bones. Yet by training the same muscles too much, you do run into the risk of injury and minimal results.

Therefore, while you can lift weights every day, you do need to give your muscles rest days so that they can recover. Otherwise, you just increase your chances of minimal to no results and injuries.

Letting your muscles heal is just as important as lifting those weights. Thus, you need to find the right balance. Varying the muscle groups that you train every day will help you a lot.