Same Muscles 2 days in a row

[GG300]

I am sure someone has addressed this before either in this forum or in the book but I have not found the answer. In both the break in program and the fat loss program you are hitting similar muscles in workout A and B. A has you performing Squats and Lunges and B has the Deadlifts and Step ups. Isn't it problamatic to be hitting the same muscle groups 2 days in a row or does the structure of this program some how work around that theory?

[steelerfan]

I'm doing Fat Loss II and I was pondering the same thing, because it does say you can do workout a & b back to back but not 3 days in a row.

[Newbie]

Somewhere in the text preceeding the workout programs, I don't know exactly where though, I'm pretty sure it clearly states not to perform ANY workouts within 48 hours of each other.

[steelerfan]

In the info describing that phase it says you can workout 2,3 or 4 times per week so to do wo's A & B 4 times a week at least 1 time would have to be back to back..

[GG300]

In the advanced section of the break in explanation it tells you that you can perform the workouts two days on, one day off,two days on and two days off. Specifically it says that you can do the workouts on two consecutive days as long as it is followed by a day of rest.

[Newbie]

I agree. It does sound contradictory.

[Lou Schuler]

But the whole point of the book was to emphasize movement patterns over "body parts."

Yes, you're working the same muscles if you choose to do A and B workouts on consecutive days. But you'd be doing the same thing if you worked "chest" on Monday and "arms" on Tuesday, or "back" on Thursday and "shoulders" on Friday, or whatever the fashionable split is these days.

Even if you divided up upper- and lower-body workouts, and did, say, deadlifts on Wednesday, followed by "back" or "shoulders" on Thursday, you'd still be hitting the same muscles. What's the difference between a bent-over row and a Romanian deadlift? You're still mauling your back extensors, even if it's isometric in one and through a range of motion in the other.

Another point to consider is that you aren't doing max-effort lifts in the fat-loss programs. And you aren't being told to go to failure. Your goal is to create metabolic disruptions that will boost your metabolism and lead to fat loss. And what could be more metabolically disruptive than doing lower-body exercises on consecutive days?

[GG300]

Thanks for the clarification, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.

[ljk]

I thought I'd add that although the muscle groups worked are sometimes the same, but the planes and dominant groups are different - is that correct? I.e. you are doing squats one day but the following day you do romanians - one is more quad- and the other hip-dominant...similarly, you are doing horizontal pulling (rows) one day but vertical pulling (pulldowns) the next.

But it's still brutal...