Even if I go to complete failure in the same way as my other muscles doing squats, deadlifts, sprinting, whatever else to the point where I have to sit down for a few minutes to regain my composure, they are never as sore as my back and chest and arms the next day. Why is this?
Is it because I keep walking on them for the rest of the day? Would continuing to lift light weights with my other muscles for the rest of the day continue to grow and strengthen my muscles? I'm not a believer that I need to be dead sore to experience results. I just am curious why they are not all the same.
Side note, I've not yet been as sore as my heavy carb eating days. Going from workout to eating fat and meat does really well to increase results and healing time. A little bit of carbs seems to add some energy back without a BG spike, but that's minimal at about 20g. However I don't think this lack of soreness in my legs has anything to do with that.
The more conditioned and fit you become, you will no longer get sore after a workout.
However, we generally won't feel the burn in our legs and butt muscles unless we are extremely out of shape, because they are very big muscle groups and are completey different than working your arms. You'll have to add heavier weights to assist or do more reps.
Abs also don't train the same way in strength as your arms do, which is why martial arts make you do over 300 crunches and like 500 squats. You generally won't feel the burn at all.
Also, I hope you realize that sprints will not grow your leg muscles but will probably tone them and make them smaller, but it will increase your fat burning time for later workouts in the week due to HIIT and epoc. Just do minimal squats and lunges with heavy weights if you want intense leg and butt muscles!
Continuing to lift light weights throughout the day would only weaken your muscles and lead to overtraining... the result is that you will become scrawney and stickly and most likely injured. Once you OVERLOAD (which means lifting heavy weights) your muscles, they need to REST in order to GROW. Doing the opposite will result in the opposite.
Same as working out for too long - it will make you scrawney and obviously unhealthy, not big and strong. Doing too many reps will make you toned, not give you more mass. The only thing that grows muscle is lifting as heavy as you can for low reps - inbetween 8-12 for only 3 sets and then giving that muscle at least the rest of the day, a night and another day and a night of REST.
Food intake should consist of adequate complex carboydrates to fuel your workout as this will give you energy for anaerobic activity (strength training), that is what it is used for and then you should be eating fats as this will give you energy for aerobic workouts (as you SHOULD be doing if you wish to cut fat to become completely ripped because strength training alone will not help you lose fat), such as mild to moderate running, walking, jogging, swimming, and ultimately adequete protien all throughout the day because that is the only thing that will help to repair and ultimately grow muscles. Protien will help you recover faster. Carbs (complex carbs) and fats help give energy. Simple carbs like most sugary fruits and even some veggies and white flours will just supply you with short term energy that will give you a blood sugar spike, that's why it's good to find better long lasting carb alternatives that actually do the trick.
