Is rest day necessary if muscle is not sore?

Is rest day necessary if muscle is not sore?

For example, can I train upper body and core 5 days in a row? (Which i am doing now)

I have practiced bodyweight training for sometime, therefore my recovery speed is quite fast I think. 

Suppose all reps are executed with high quality, by doing more sets like 10 sets of RCPE1, or have 6 days a week of RCPE1, can I say I will have more improvement?

Hi Chris,

More training does not always equal more improvement. Muscle soreness is also not the only dictator of fatigue and stress. 5 days a week of Core and UB workouts would be way too much for most people, myself included. Less is often more but it takes experimentation to find the weekly schedule that works best for your recovery abilities as they vary from person to person.

The best advice I can give you is stick with the same weekly training schedule for at least 4 weeks in a row before making any changes. After the 4+ weeks of that schedule, look back through your workout history and see if you have been steadily improving. Also take time to monitor how your body feels. If you feel fatigued or your workouts did not really advance, then you should strongly consider reducing weekly volume. If you feel excellent and you improved each week then you are most likely fine with that schedule.

I am constantly monitoring my body, my improvement, and my progress to ensure I am recovering. Rest days are just as important as training days. 

I agree with Everett. Reducing the weekly volume will help you recover better and in my experience this leads to faster progress. If you'd like to train more I'd reccomend to add the Stretch courses and Handstand courses to your schedule. These will also allow you to progress faster with your Foundations  

Hi Chris , the only people who can take benefits from 5 days of training the same things are people with 10/15+ years of years who passed from one day session 4 times a week , to 5 sessions a week , to double sessions everyday. this leads to a body and a nervous system which can hold a volume of work and recover by far more faster than a normal person.

if you do not have this type of preparation you will reach plateau and overtraining very soon and your joints will begin to hurt.

10 hours ago, Everett Carroll said:

Less is often more but it takes experimentation

The best advice I can give you is stick with the same weekly training schedule for at least 4 weeks in a row before making any changes.

So I can still stick at this my current schedule for 1 to 2 months to see if it works. I started GST for 1 month, and I think I have some noticeable improvement on muscle activation, like in RCPE1 I feel my rear delts and retractor work more smoothly. Body stiffness and breathing is somewhat improved in some movement. 

7 hours ago, Pauline Taube said:

I agree with Everett. Reducing the weekly volume will help you recover better and in my experience this leads to faster progress. If you'd like to train more I'd reccomend to add the Stretch courses and Handstand courses to your schedule. These will also allow you to progress faster with your Foundations  

Sometimes my core lack of power compare to my good days, I may train my core too much. So I should reduce core work to see if less is more. But I have a question: Should I train the same body part everyday but combined with heavy days and light days? For example, in heavy days I do GST core. in light days I do little core work for 5 minutes. Some coaches say little work is better than no work.

It seems that the safest solution is to dilute strength work with mobility and learn movement. I will definitely do that. 

6 hours ago, Alessandro Mainente said:

Hi Chris , the only people who can take benefits from 5 days of training the same things are people with 10/15+ years of years who passed from one day session 4 times a week , to 5 sessions a week , to double sessions everyday. this leads to a body and a nervous system which can hold a volume of work and recover by far more faster than a normal person.

if you do not have this type of preparation you will reach plateau and overtraining very soon and your joints will begin to hurt.

I have some questions:

1. Can core training leads to injury? Core training do not involve much joint?

2. Can doing F1 everyday lead to injury? Because for example, RCPE1 5 sets 15 reps is done in 5 minutes, it seems very light work and will not put much stress on joints. To my past experience, street workout coach tell students to work on pulling strength for half hours, maybe hundred of pull ups, explosive pull ups etc. At that time students including me gain really fast progress (10 pull ups to 25 pull ups and 10 ugly muscle ups within 4 months, and fast muscle gain). 

The reason I quit this form of training, because I think the coaches are not knowledgeable (The coaches train hard for 2-3 hours a day everyday, one of the coach can do impressive 12 OAP (most the coaches only train for 1-3 years) ,  however they suffer from lots of injury and stiff body, which I think it is really unhealthy and stupid). So I come here to hope to improve fundamental muscle activation and mobility. 

Sorry for typing too much I just think F1 cannot put much stress on joints and nervous system. I do not know if I am correct or not

Chris, I'd reccomend to follow Coach Sommer's schedule to begin with. If you want to train Foundations more frequently you can do the workouts twice per week for at least a month before you consider to add more. In the beginning you should focus on mastering the basics. Once mastered the first elements in Foundation One you can add some daily exercises where you do previously mastered elements. You should also add some stretching on your days off. 

Training Foundations everyday is not advisable to begin with. You should let your body adapt and recover before adding more. As Alex said too much will lead to overtraining quickly. Once you mastered the basic progressions you can add previously mastered elements with integrated mobility more frequently. 

Doing hundred pull-ups everyday without proper preparation or mobility sounds like a recipe for injury to me. I've had good progress myself by training 'hardcore' calisthenics, but this didn't last too long. Because my joints and connective tissues couldn't handle the load. 

It's hard to give you any specific advice without having seen any of your training. I highly reccomend to post some videos of your Foundation training so we can see we're you're at atm and give you some more personal feedback  

Looking forward to follow your training here!

Chris, our video review system here at GymnasticBodies is a fantastic way of getting personalised feedback on your Foundation Training - we look forward to seeing your progress.

Hi Chris,

The fastest way to slow your progress is through injury.

As Alessandro stated earlier the people who benefit from high training volume are people who have spent years increasing their workload capacity. 

The progressions and workload in Foundations have been designed to allow your body adequate time to recover and progress. More does not always equal better. 

As other's have basically stated.  Do not be a in rush to complete the courses you are currently working on. Your body repairs itself while you sleep.

More training does not make your body take less time to develop the needed additional connective or muscle tissue.

Sure your body seemingly has a high recovery rate, however tendons and ligaments do not heal or develop at the same rate as skin and muscle tissue. 

Excessive core training if not equally balanced can produces postural changes.

it is enough to perform biceps curl for 15 reps for 4 sets every single days to obtain a brachioradialis sindrome. 

remember that we cannot take the risk of suggesting you to do more. We cans suggest to do the minimum to hold you far from possible problems. As stated by me more times, if you can do more, you can repeat the same workout twice a week.

And don't forget that if you are doing a bodyweight exercise you are already using your core.  It might not be the focal point of the exercise, but every workout I am doing right now uses my core, including the stretch programs.  If you spread it out over the week you will be using your core everyday.      

It's addictive to feel strong, no question. Everyone here is telling you the same thing for a reason; we've all done it. Then wondered why some guy in the gym only twice a week grew and strengthened like a weed while we out worked them. 

Doing more in a week isn't going to progress the schedule faster, and even if you feel fine does add up. These days I prefer to look at weekly rather than daily volume; the goal is not to get to the cool elements fastest but to be strong enough that there is nowhere else to go to keep developing that trait