Why you Should Exercise Daily
We have all heard for many years about how many hours you should rest a muscle between workouts and what the optimal number of workouts each is week based on your goal. Spending enough time on these things can send you down a rabbit hole on the internet ending in frustration. When I was competing, I wouldn’t go on a walk with my wife most days because I either had just recently done a Squat workout or was going to Deadlift in a couple days. My thought was I was either too sore from the previous training session or didn’t want to be too sore for the next training session. Looking back, this was terrible thinking and planning on my part. As I’ve shifted from competition to focused on health, I have increased my training frequency and decreased my training intensity. If you would have told me to do this previously, I would’ve said no way, can’t interrupt the gains of muscle and strength. I still believe that if you’re striving to be at the top of your competitive sport, I would rank rest and recovery near the top of importance. For many people, they’re not at the top of the athletic field and they’re using exercise to benefit their life and well being. The following is my list of observations from myself, friends, and clients who exercise every single day.
It’s important to note that daily exercise doesn’t mean performing 10 sets of 10 reps on barbell squat or max effort bench press. By daily exercise, I mean a period of focused movement that elevates your heart rate and improves your capacity in some form. This could be as simple as walking, bike ride, kayaking, yoga etc. find what moves you and move. I believe that the information overload and dogmatic schools of thought have stifled more people into confusion and frustration than they’ve helped. Every workout plan will work for someone and be a nightmare for others, but the goal is to find the one that’s best suited for you, your needs, your personality, and your schedule.
Improved Energy
Once my body acclimated to training every day. At some point, I noticed that I had more energy and had less ups and downs during the day with my energy. Everyone feels better after a workout and this usually leads to stacking habits like eating a healthy meal after the workout or not having a drink at night because you scheduled a morning workout. I performed an experiment with myself that really changed some habits. I trained every day for 1-2 hours for a month because it would force me to eat better, reduce alcohol, and therefore sleep better to help with recovery. If I chose to eat poorly and have a beverage with it, I still had to get up and train the next morning. The energy increase since trading every day has far passed any entry drink or pre workout on the market and the side effects are more of a calmness rather than my heart skipping beats.
Improved Mood
As a business owner with aging parents, I have a lot on my plate every day and it becomes easy even for me to put my workouts on the back burner to take care of the tasks on my calendar. One day my wife noticed I had missed a few workouts and my mood was reflective of that. She told me to get off my computer and go on a walk. I was pissed because I had more work to do. We got back and I felt better and she told me I should train more because I’m a better person when I train and more enjoyable to be around. I started tracking my mood with my workouts and quickly realized that like most things, she was correct. Side note, part of this equation is choosing the right exercise based on life at that moment. During periods of high stress, I will not train in a max effort fashion or to failure. Most of my training then will be experimenting with new movements or sub maximal training to build volume. Hard enough to make me engaged in training, not hard enough that it will take a prolonged amount of time to recover from.
Stop being Sore
When you’re training everyday, your body adapts and it will not be as sore. You can always adjust your training to create a new stimulus which will create soreness because it’s new to your system, but generally you’ll notice much less soreness with a higher training frequency. If you’re only training once a week, it’s hard for your body to adapt because it’s essentially a new stimulus every week.
More Chances to Win
If you’re only training or two sessions a week, you’re hoping to hit some sort of PR within those sessions. If you’re training every day, you have the ability to hit a PR every day of the week. If you get a PR in training, this compounds into your daily life. A couple weeks ago during a workout I really didn’t want to do, I knocked out 15 bodyweight pull ups, an all time PR for me. It changed my outlook the rest of that day.
If you’re still reading, you’re likely thinking to yourself about how much time you don’t have to workout every day. Keep in mind, some of the workouts are 20 minutes long which is about as long as one episode of a TV show. When I performed an audit of my habits I found a ton of time available to be more productive. Check your screen time, usage on different apps and then set limits on them or delete them temporarily. I’ve deleted some apps that I realized were a time suck and when I went to add them I quickly realized I had missed nothing and removed them permanently. For our clients at Showtime, I always tell them that they can perform their normal workouts in our sessions and then on the other days if time is an issue, do the prescribed workouts at home in a modified fashion using bodyweight, bands, and small dumbbells or weights. If you’re wondering how to set up a daily exercise routine, email us to have a coach help you reach your goals.
Nick Showman
Showtime Strength & Performance