When you are super sore, should you rest those muscles or work them anyway?

I've just done some reading on the subject and I still don't have a clear cut answer. One place says rest it up, the other place says no, work through it. My goal is to eventually become ripped as quickly as possible (right, maybe 3 or 4 years). The last site that I read called it right. My muscles were swollen yesterday after work out, in fact my arms really rubbery. Hopefully that feeling will go away as I become stronger. Only my right arm is sore and it is precisely the next morning. Give or take 8 hours.

Depending on how sore is how I determine. Since you're just starting, i'd rest it at first, don't want to hurt yourself. You'll get to where you know you're body and what you can handle.

The trainer I was with last night said that what I should do is work on different body groups each time that I am in the gym. That way the section I worked would have a chance to rest anyway.

Last night I worked my chest muscles and did 3 sets of 15 on the Nitro Preacher Curl machine. My arms were so rubbery, I couldn't even try to do a pushup.

My feeling on the soreness is basically, I'll take any amount of soreness, I just don't want to injure myself.

There are many ways to do this.....

1. Rest-this is the most common.
2. Active recovery-this is where you would do some really light work for the sore muscle group. So let's say you did some heavy curls and your biceps are sore the next day. You could do some VERY light bicep work the following day just to get some blood flowing. It will help you recover.
3. There is something I read about and I don't know if it works but it sounds like it would. Taking the biceps as the example, the day after a heavy bicep workout you would do some forearm work. This would pump the forearms and that means the blood would be forced through the upper arms and in theory increase circulation in the bicep area.
4. Another active recovery thing...this one is good no matter what you trained and is sore from the previous day. Go for a walk, play some ball do something that isn't related to weight training. Besides helping with soreness it is nice to get out and do something.

#4. sounds good. I used to play raquetball a lot, even got pretty good. LA Fitness has racquetball courts. All I need is partner and new racquet. Mine is a bent up old aluminium racquet.

#2. I think worked for me when I was sore once before. I'm sure it was the bicep work that has me sore. Thing is, the muscle on the backside of my elbow is what is sore, not my bicep.

I am in the gym 6 days a week. Here is what we did that night. 20 minutes of cardio to warm up on the elliptical machine. The preacher curl was just an additional exercise. He had wanted me to do pushups but I couldn't because my arms felt too rubbery, I couldn't get them to work hardly at all. This was after the first 3 exercises below.

1. Chest Press
2. Incline
3. Delt Fly
4. Pushups
5. Cardio, I have been getting on the Eliptical lately.

I think he had something else in mind as well but the machines were buzy. These are the only weight machines I have used so far. I am supposed to get some leg routines tomorrow evening. I have basically been filling up the other evenings with cardio until I get more information on what to work on.

This is the only routines that I have. I am getting a little bit frustrated only working on machines one or two days a week and then it's only chest muscles.

And thanks for the replies Arttie