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How To Handle Muscle Soreness
October 26, 2008
Have you ever experienced muscle soreness from your last workout? Having sore muscles is a good reason to skip a workout, right? Maybe, maybe not.
Sore muscles and weight lifting go together like celebrities and breakups, especially if you are a beginner or coming back to weight training.
If you’re the typical male, you’ve commonly forgotten to check your ego at the door and lift too much weight rather than building gradually into your workouts.
If you’re too busy to finish reading this, my best and simple advice is to lower the intensity and work through it if you have sore muscles and scheduled for a workout. Sore muscles are weak and damaged and if you expose them to more high intensity, it can lead to further damage, delayed recovery and potentially injury.
Getting muscle soreness is very common and a trial-and-error experience because you’re not sure what you can handle and what you can not handle.
Let me remind you to distinguish between soreness and pain - muscle soreness is not bad, pain is bad. I commonly recommend working through muscle soreness, and not taking a day off, but you should use lighter weights until the soreness passes.
You will find the best sore muscle treatment is to perform your next workout with lighter weights and higher repetitions to flush the lactic acid, a by-product making the muscles sore.
To minimize muscle soreness is the first place, focus on the stretching program found in the Upside Down Training phase (included in my www.VinceDelMonteFitness.com program), stretch before you train and even during your rest periods in between sets.
I don’t personally like to stretch in between sets because it mentally distracts me from staying intense but that’s just me - experiment yourself and decide based on the best results.
Don’t forget to to stretch properly before and after you train and despite what you’ve been told - there is a right way and wrong way to stretch and I show you exactly how to do it safely in my muscle building program:
http://www.VinceDelMonteFitness.com
To hammer home, muscle soreness is not something to panic about or justification for missing a workout - it’s just a response to “over reaching.” Over reaching is when you “over do it” in a particular workout and can results from:
– too many sets
– too much weight
– explosive lifting
– plyometrics
– new exercise
– emphasis on the negative
– new angle or stretch on the tissue
– shortened or tight tissue i.e. muscle, tendon, ligament, fascia
Long story short, you did too much of something. Your body is not over trained, nor does it need a vacation and you don’t have to double your protein to recover. Here’s what to do to eliminate the muscle soreness quickly:
1. Apply cold water to your muscles after you train. I like to run the cold water (in the shower) on the recently trained muscle for 3 minutes and alternate that with 1 minute of hot water. I do this 2-3 times depending on how sore I predict I’ll be.
2. Focus on static stretching as prescribed in my muscle building program - anything less than daily will not accelerate muscle recovery. I aim for a 1:1 ratio as the optimal stretching time per week i.e. if you train 3 hours a week, you should stretch 3 hours a week.
3. Train through the muscle soreness with lighter weights and higher reps, but stick to the program you’re still following.
4. If massage is available, aim for 1-2 sessions per week for “clean up” and maintenance.
So if you’re just coming back, swallow your pride and lighten the load and you’ll experience minimal muscle soreness. Train hard and train even smarter,
Vince DelMonte
Comments
9 Responses to “How To Handle Muscle Soreness”
Got something to say?
Lactic acid does not make muscles sore. Lactic acid is actually necessary for anaerobic exercise and will be gone from your muscles within an hour of exercise.
I’m just confused with the part that you go through soreness with lighter weights and higher reps. What if I’m currently doing 5×5 with heavy weights?
I could not agree more. The worse one could do is to not workout. The only item I do not agree with is to always work through the pain. As you stated - you have to know the difference between pain and soreness. You should work though the soreness,;however, pain may mean that you have to find another muscle group to work that day. If pain persist, see a MD.
If you progressively work your way up to what your body needs for physical adaptations, you should barely be getting sore. Soreness is a result of too much microtrauma. Of course we want microtrauma, but over doing it can hinder your results. Many people view soreness as a good indicator of an excellent workout. However, this is not the case. Perhaps, it might be the opposite. Think out of the box. Have you ever been in a car accident? or Did you ever get kicked by something or someone so hard? How did you feel the next day? Your body probably felt SORE. Tell me the difference between the soreness you got from the car accident from the soreness you got from the gym. Nothing. It’s just that you been programmed by society to think that if you get into a car accident, the pain is bad soreness, while the next day after a workout, you think the soreness is good soreness. Hey, soreness is soreness. The CNS doesn’t have different types of soreness. It’s just excessive microtrauma to the muscles or perhaps to the nerve connections telling the muscle what to do (lengthen/shorten). I hope this is food for thought and that you start questioning the norms of exercise.
Scientist have several ideas of what causes muscle soreness, but there is no one reason; only hypotheses.
Accident=Bad Soreness
Gym=Good Soreness
Accident= Negative Situation
Gym= Positive Situation
Situations change how we look at things.
Hey Lucky, for the 5×5 phase and heavier loading phases, still do higher reps… you might do 5 sets of 15 or 5 sets of 20 that day.
Listen to your body - focus on the work out being beneficial by pumping blood into the muscles which is a powerful form of recovery. You might only need to do 3 sets or 2 sets - your body will tell you.
The bottom line is to do something. Don’t train through PAIN, train through the soreness and you’re recovery will be extra quick.
Vince,
Thanks so much for this advice on sore muscles, but especially for the stretching exercises every day. I had no idea that I should be doing a 1:1 ratio.
Harold
Hi Vince, i’ve just recently finished a maters degree in sport and exercise including 2 exercise physiology modules. What i learned from these modules was the lack of evidence to support a beneficial effect of stretching post exercise for recovery including alleviating muscular soreness such as DOMS.
As for contrast temperature water immersion, the same was also evident within the literature, showing that yet again there was no deifinitve positive effect of such a technique for recovery post exercise.
As for massage the same was also evident, with no evidence of a ‘cleaning up’ effect to help recovery.
I personally don’t use any of the aforementioned techniques due to the lack of a general consensus within the literature as to any effect on recovery. Whilst i disagree with the use of these techniques (stretching, massage and contrast temperture water immersion), i am of the opinion that a repeated exercise session of similar type and intensity the following day does significantly reduce muscle soreness in the following days. This is based on my experience as a subject within a muscular damage study and the results which showed reduced percieved muscle soreness.
I would just like to know if you have any literature showing a definitive beneficial effect of the other methods (stretching, massage and contrast temperture water immersion)? or whether this is based on work with your clients?
Although i have ranted about my negative opinion of several of the methods you have mentioned, i do appreciate the fact that inidividual differences may exist between participants, in that any method you mentioned may alleviate muscle soreness for a particular individual.
Lastly, do you use such techniques as you are of the opinion that such methods can do no harm and may actually be beneficial for recovery.
Anyways, rant over, i just had to get that off my chest, just wondered if you could respond to what i have said please?
how do you know if you done a good workout????
do you have to be sore the next day to know if you done a good workout?