There are different reasons why you would feel Muscle Soreness After Working Out. Depending on how hard your exercise intensity is and how much you rest, muscle soreness can be beneficial or it can halt your process.

Should You Feel Muscle Soreness After Every Workout?

Well, that all depends on how you train. I will explain in this article why muscle soreness is beneficial to muscle growth when performed correctly and how muscle soreness after working out can slow your process in your muscle gains when you exercise incorrectly.

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For some people, Calves Exercises can be the hardest to archive results. This is because the muscles in the calves are designed by nature to take a lot of punishment. You walk and run on your calves everyday. The calves without you realizing it are being worked all day long. This means you really have to work them hard and intense to see results. Don’t be afraid to punish your calves in your workouts. Train them every workout day if you have to. Here are some tips to get your calves to grow.

Work Every Angle You Can

Attacking the calves from different angles will help spark muscle growth. For example, when performing the calf raise.

Standing Calf Raises

1. Start out by having your feet parallel to each other.
2. During the next exercise, have your toes pointed in ward.
3. Then in the last exercise, have your toes pointed outward.

You might even want to try to lean forward when doing these calves exercises to take advantage of all the angles. The different angles will work different parts of your calves. Training different parts of your calves will help make your entire calf grow as a whole.

Vary The Weights And Change The Sets

Keep your calves guessing. Never have them get used to one routine with the same weight.

One example is during the first week, try a pyramid system where you increase the weight load in every set. Then the second week, try a descending set routine where you will start out with a very high weight and then decrease the weight in every set. Variety will confuse the muscle and force them to grow.

Change The Rest Times Between Your Sets

One week try a 30 second rest interval, then the next week go with a 60 second rest interval. Another way to confuse the muscle.

Change The Amount Of Days You Do Your Calves Exercises

One week you might workout the calves everyday. Then the next week, you might workout out the calves one to three days. Just one more way to confuse the muscle and spark growth.

By Henry Chervenka

More information on how to build muscle the right way.

Throughout this Abs Tips Article, remember the abs are a very unique muscle in the body. Abs are a fast re-oxidizing muscle group. They can recover quicker then other muscle groups in the body. Your rest period may be around 30 seconds rather then 60 to 90 seconds compared to other slower muscle groups.

Another special feature about the abs is they can be trained everyday because they are a fast re-oxidizing muscle group.

Abs Tips And Your Training

Abs should be trained with high reps for each set. About 15 to 20 reps per set for each different ab exercise you perform. Of course, the number of sets and number of different exercises you perform each day will depend on how long you have been training your abs.

Here are 4 major abs tips to help get your abdominal muscles ripped and shredded by varying each of the following…

• exercises
• volume
• difficulty
• days

Exercises And Confusion

If you’ve read some of my other articles, you know that I was going to include Exercise Confusion in my Abs Tips. So, you should always perform different exercises to keep your abs confused from week to week. This will spark more muscle growth and help define your abdominal region more.

Volume

The volume can be changed as well to give your abdominal muscles more of a variety and make them adapt more to that change. This adaption will allow your muscles not to get comfortable in one set routine and force the abs to work in different intensities.

Difficulty

Changing the difficulty of the exercises will have a direct effect on muscle growth as well. Some days you may find yourself with less energy and want to go with a lighter ab routine. While other days you might have an abundance of energy and go all out with all the hardest ab routines. This mix and match system will give your abs a constant change of tempo and keep them growing from the new angles and stresses they will under go.

Change The Days

The final way is to change the days. One week, you might go for a six days straight ab workouts. And the next week, you might go every other day. Giving your abs rest can actually help them to grow. Just because they are a fast recovery muscle doesn’t mean you should push them every day. Every muscle needs a certain amount of time to fully heal and the abs are no exception.

Two Additional Abs Tips, The 1st is Breathing

You may be surprised to find that I list Breathing within my abs tips. Breathing plays a big role in getting more out of every rep you do for your abdominal exercises.

Breathing out every time you contract your abs will help you flex your abs and focus more on muscle contraction.

Breathing in slowly after muscle contraction will give you more body control and help you keep the right tempo for your return rep.

Your abdominal reps should be around four seconds each. One second on the contraction and three seconds on the slow controlled return.

Nutrition

The last of my abs tips is Nutrition. You can have all the ab muscles in the world, but if you have a thick layer of fat hiding your abs then you are defeating the whole purpose.

When you want to show off those abs, you need to train your body with high intensity interval training and put your body in a caloric deficit. This way you will burn fat throughout your entire body and eventually see the six pack you have under that layer of fat.

There are plenty of different Chest Exercises Without Weights you can do for developing the chest muscle. You can hit every part of the chest by switching the angle of your body or the width of your hand position. I will give you a few examples of different body weight chest routines that I do that take full advantage of the body’s angles and hand positions.

Hand Position Push Up

The first of the chest exercises without weights technique that I do is changing the hand position. I start out with my weakest hand position first and I end up with my strongest.

I start out with a close hand position. They are also called diamond push ups. I do as many reps as I can until failure.

Then without rest, I move my hands to about shoulder width apart. This is a stronger position for me so I can continue with more reps. I do as many reps as I can in that hand position until muscle failure.

After that I go to my strongest hand position which is a wide hand position. My hands are about three inches wider then my shoulders and I continue to do as many reps as I possibly can until I can not perform another rep.

All three hand position are done back to back without any rest. The completion of all three hand positions will be called one complete set.  After one complete set, wait for 60 to 90 seconds and repeat the set all over again for a total of three complete sets.

Angle Push Up

Usually, the above chest exercises without weights workout will be enough for me for any given day. But some days I like to change it up a little and perform different angles with my body instead of hand positions.

In every angle performed, I keep my hands shoulder width apart. Like the previous workout, I start out with my weakest angle first and then progress to my strongest.

My weakest position is the decline push up. That is because you have more weight pushing on your chest. I will start out doing decline push ups until failure of reps.

Then without rest, I go right into my regular flat push up. I will perform as many push ups as I can until I can not do any more reps.

Finally, I will go right into my strongest angled push up without any rest, which is the incline push up. I will finish with as many reps as I possibly can perform.

All three angles will be performed without any rest and will count as one complete set. Just like the hand position push up, wait 60 to 90 seconds after each set and do a total of three sets.

Tips On The Above Chest Exercises Without Weights

A few tips on push ups that you can use to better yourself is the positioning of your elbows. When you keep your elbows tucked into your body, you will put more stress on your triceps.

When you have your elbows at a 90 degree angle from your torso, you will be working more of your shoulders. I like to have my elbows at a 45 degree angle form my torso. I feel my chest being worked the most at this angle.

Dips

Another one of the great chest exercises without weights are the dips. This is a fairly difficult exercise for beginners. If you are having problems doing more then a few reps on dips, I recommend doing negative dips.

Negative Dips

To do negative dips, simply lowering yourself very slowly. This will help you gain strength in that particular exercise. So, instead of lowering your self for the usual 2 to 3 seconds, try to lower yourself for about 7 to 10 seconds.

These are my best picks of all the Chest Exercises Without Weights.

Performing Bodyweight Exercise, you can workout muscles in your body including your Triceps without the use of weights. However, keep in mind that you can not train for muscle mass gain as you could with regular weights.

Triceps

The triceps are a relatively small muscle group, so that means you do not need a lot of different exercises to make them grow. The smaller the muscle, the less volume you need to spark muscle growth. Also, if you are combining working out the triceps with a larger muscle group that day, make sure you perform your smaller muscle exercises after you have done your larger muscle exercises. If you exercise your smaller muscles first, you will not have enough energy to perform your larger muscle exercises.

Close Grip Push Up

The first exercise I like to do when performing my triceps bodyweight exercise, is the close grip push up. This exercise will target the triceps but not isolate them. The close grip push up will also work the…

• chest
• shoulders and
• slight emphasis on the abdominal region.

For this first exercise, I like to do a decline close grip push up. I do three sets of this. For each set, I do as many reps as I can until I can’t do any more reps. For beginners, you can do a regular close grip push up if you find the decline close grip push up is too hard to perform.

Triceps Dips

The second bodyweight exercise I do for the triceps are dips. To activate the triceps more then the chest, keep your elbows close to your side and lean forward a little. This also works the…

• shoulders
• chest and
• forearms.

Doing three sets, with each set going to failure on reps is a great bodyweight triceps workout. Do not be discouraged if you can not do that many reps for dips. Just do as many as you can and continue to the next workout.

Triceps Bench Dips

The third and final bodyweight exercise I do for my triceps is called the triceps bench dips. We have done two different exercises that have worked the triceps and other muscles groups. Now to finish up the routine, you will be doing an isolation exercise that focuses only on working the triceps.

To perform this exercise, start out by having your back face the bench and place your hands behind you. Have your legs straight out in front of you and bend your arms down until your butt touches or is close to the ground. Keeping your legs straight and back vertical, lift up your arms using your triceps muscles. Try to keep your triceps parallel to each other and your elbows pointed away from your body. Like the other two previous exercises, do three sets with each set going till failure on reps.

You can add bodyweight exercises into your weight lifting routine. They are a great way to get your muscle warmed up before heavy lifting or a great way to finish up a routine. You can also add bodyweight exercises on days that you do not have enough energy to lift heavy weights, keeping the muscle active. There are many benefits to bodyweight exercises that even the top bodybuilders still incorporate bodyweight exercise into their routine.