Can You Do Body Weight Exercises the Day After Lifting?

Body-weight exercises are strength-training exercises that use your own body weight as resistance. For example, pushups, pullups and crunches are body-weight exercises. Lifting means using free weights or machine weights to lift resistance weight with your muscles to strengthen them. Because muscles need time to recover as part of the strength-building process, you should only do body-weight exercises the day after weight lifting if you're not working the same muscles as you did the day before, or if you only worked them at a very light intensity.

  1. Benefits

    • Keeping variance in your strength-training regimen by doing both body-weight exercises and weightlifting exercises helps muscles grow more mass faster. That's mainly because doing the same exercises in every strength-training workout only stresses the same particular muscle fibers the same way. Doing a variety of exercises to work the same muscle will use all of your muscle fibers for the entire length of your muscle, to ensure optimal gains in strength and mass.

    Why Timing Matters

    • The timing of your strength-training workouts matter because strength training tears your muscle fibers so they rebuild stronger. The rebuilding part, known as the recovery process, makes all the difference in muscle gain. You need to allow enough time between muscle-training sessions for your muscles to rebuild, or else you won't see any progress and can get injured.

    Workout Intensity Affects Recovery Time

    • If you're planning on working the same muscles in your body-weight workout as you did the day before when you were lifting, you should allow 48 hours for recovery if you lifted at a moderate intensity level. You can work the same muscles the next day if you only lifted at a light intensity level. Just make sure the workouts are at least 24 hours apart. However, if your lifting workout was intense in exertion or length, allow a 72-hour recovery window before working the same muscles in body-weight exercises.

    Fuel for Recovery

    • The amount of time your muscles need to recover from a workout also depends on how soon you replenish your carbohydrates afterward. At the end of a workout, your body is typically depleted of the readily usable carbs glycogen and glucose. Until you eat simple carbs, your muscles won't be able to begin the recovery process. If you don't have carbs soon after your workout, your body starts secreting the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol eats at muscle tissue, converting protein to glucose, and can cause muscle loss. Blending a shake using ice, milk, fruit and protein powder can give you the carbs you need to start recovering sooner, and the protein your muscles will need to rebuild.

    Other Factors That Affect Recovery Time

    • Hormones secreted during sleep are important for muscle recovery, so it's also necessary to get adequate sleep to help with the muscle rebuilding process. "Men's Fitness" magazine suggests aiming for eight hours of sleep each night if you do a lot of workouts in the week. Drinking alcohol reduces the quality of your sleep and also affects muscle recovery by reducing blood circulation to your muscles, slowing down their recovery time. Avoid doing body-weight exercises with the same muscles you lifted with the previous day if you drank that night after your workout or if you didn't get much sleep.