Train Through Soreness by Chad Waterbury

If a muscle is still sore from a previous workout, can it be recovered and subsequently trained? What if a muscle group isn't sore but your performance is less than your last workout? And what happens if you simply train a body part every day?

Intuitively, it seems that once soreness is gone, the muscle has recovered. And if a workout doesn't cause soreness, then recovery is often thought of as the time your performance is enhanced. For example, if your 3RM for the bench press is 315 pounds, and if you can perform three reps with 318 pounds five days later, then your muscles are recovered, right?

Without getting too far off track, I'll say that if your goal is hypertrophy, then you should train a muscle group before it's recovered, thus thumbing your nose at the following dogmatic definition of recovery: "A muscle is recovered once soreness subsides and performance is enhanced."

I agree, for the most part, with that definition if we're talking about athletes who train for maximal strength and power. But I don't believe that definition is correct if your goal is to build your muscles as fast as possible.

I like to make my point about training frequency by posing this question: What if I told you that I'd give you a million dollars if you increased your upper arm girth by one inch in one month?

What would you do? Think about that for a minute.

I'd be willing to bet that you'd be training with a very high frequency for that month. Am I right? If you hired me to train you for the challenge, that's exactly what I'd recommend. But what you probably don't know is that you wouldn't be training for the last five days of the month. Why? Because the muscles need time to respond to the demand.

There's no doubt in my mind that if you're training for hypertrophy you can and should train through soreness. You probably know where I'm going with this. Since you'll be training every day, you'll be sore virtually all the time. You'll need to train through soreness, and relish in it.

I've found that if you train through soreness, even if your performance is lower than the last session, it'll lead to the greatest rebound of muscle growth, as long as it's properly planned and organized with the right volume, loading, and subsequent rest period.

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