Muscle Soreness: What It Is and How To Get Rid Of It
Why do you get sore muscles from exercise, and does being sore mean you did a good workout? Can you prevent or get rid of muscle soreness?
Read on to find out.
You’ve probably felt it: the day or two after your workout, your muscles feel sore and uncomfortable. Sometimes it’s so bad that you have a hard time sitting, standing, and walking. A few days later, it’s gone.
What Is Muscle Soreness?
When your muscles are sore in the 24-72 hours after a workout, that’s called delayed onset muscle soreness (or DOMS). When you have DOMS, you’re feeling inflammation from damage to your muscle fibers and the connective tissue (like tendons) that attaches to your muscles.
Some people think that DOMS is caused by a build up of lactic acid in your muscles. That’s not true.
Lactic acid does build up in your muscles when you do high intensity exercise, but your body clears it away very quickly (within minutes or even seconds) after you stop exercising. Lactic acid is partially responsible for the pain or burning you feel during your workout, but it has nothing to do with the muscle soreness you’re feeling a day or two later.
Is Muscle Soreness Dangerous?
Since muscle soreness comes from damage to your muscles, it might seem that it’s harmful, but it’s usually not. Your muscles heal from that damage pretty quickly, and if you’re following a smart, progressive program, you’ll build bigger and stronger muscles.
In some extreme cases, exercise-induced muscle damage can cause a potentially serious condition called exertional rhabdomyolysis, which can lead to kidney failure. That’s very rare, though, and it usually takes a really excessive amount of exercise to cause a serious problem.
The biggest issue with soreness is that it makes it harder for you to do your next workout. You’ll probably be less motivated to push yourself if you’re already sore, and you might even be tempted to skip your next session.
If you’re a pretty new exerciser, you might give up on your training altogether if you get too sore. You might be scared of training hard because you don’t want to be sore.
Since consistency is the most important thing when you’re first starting an exercise habit, anything that causes you to miss a workout is a big problem.
If you start missing workouts or training too light all the time, you’ll have a hard time reaching your goals.
That’s why it’s important to understand what soreness is, and find out ways to prevent it or at least make it feel better if you already have it.
What Kind Of Exercise Is Most Likely To Cause Soreness?
You’re most likely to be sore the first time you do an exercise, or when you suddenly increase the intensity.
Soreness is specific to the exact type of exercise or movement that you do, so even if you’ve been exercising in a certain way for a long time, you’ll probably get sore when you do something different.
You’re also more likely to be sore if you do exercises with a lot of “eccentric contractions”. An eccentric contraction is when a muscle contracts while it lengthens.
That happens during the part of an exercise when you’re lowering the weight, like when you’re lowering the bar down to your chest during a chest press or when you lower the weight towards the floor in a bicep curl. That’s also called the “negative” part of the exercise.
The way your muscles have to work when lowering a weight is a little different than when they raise it, and it tends to cause the most muscle damage.
If You Don’t Get Sore, Does That Mean You Didn’t Work Out Hard Enough?
Some people think being sore means you must have done a good workout.
In fact, there’s really no connection between how sore you get and how much muscle you build and strength you gain from your workouts.
Since certain types of exercises and situations are more likely to cause soreness, I could specifically design a workout to get you as sore as possible. I would have you do a lot of sets of a new exercise and have you lower the weight as slowly as possible.
When researchers want to study DOMS, that’s exactly what they do. I would hate to be a participant in one of those studies.
I even know some personal trainers who will do this on purpose, “proving” that they’re giving their clients a good workout by making them sore all the time. That’s not a sign of a good workout, it’s a sign of a crappy trainer.
Don’t You Need Muscle Damage To Grow Your Muscles?
The “common knowledge” explanation for how muscles grow is that you get microtears in your muscles when you work out and when your body heals those tears it makes your muscles bigger and stronger. That’s pretty simple and easy to understand, which is probably why that explanation is so popular.
But like most things in exercise science, it’s way too oversimplified. There are actually three things that happen when you work out that are involved in muscle growth.
I’ll try to keep these as simple as I can, but it’s important that you know the real story so you can understand why you don’t need muscle damage to get muscle growth.
When you lift heavy weights, your muscle fibers get tensed and compressed.
Waste products like lactic acid build up in your muscles when they’re working hard.
Your muscle fibers get tiny amounts of damage. This is where DOMS comes from.
Your muscles sense all these things, and when they do, it sets off the process that eventually makes your muscles bigger and stronger. The best results probably come when you have all three of those factors, but you don’t actually need all of them for your muscles to grow.
Researchers think the first one, tension and compression of your muscle fibers, is the most important part of building muscle. If you just create that muscle fiber tension you can get results, even without the other two factors. That tension happens most when you lift heavy weights.
The other two factors also seem to be important, but they’re not essential for muscle growth. In other words, if you have factor 1 but not factor 2 or 3, you can still get muscle growth. That means you can build muscle without any muscle damage.
You can also cause muscle damage and not get any muscle growth. Think about long distance running. That causes muscle damage and soreness, but you won’t get bigger or stronger muscles from running marathons, because it’s missing the muscle tension you get from lifting heavy weights.
Can You Prevent Or Get Rid Of Muscle Soreness?
Since you don’t need to get sore to get results, it’s a good idea to avoid it if you can. That's especially true when you first start working out.
There’s lots of research on other methods of decreasing soreness and helping you recover from your workouts.
Some are expensive and hard to get for the average person. Some work better than others, while some don’t work at all. And some have very little research behind them, so we really don’t know if they work or not.
Here’s some what the research (and my experience) says about some common strategies:
Ease Into Exercise
The best way to avoid soreness is to ease into any new type of exercise.
When you first try an exercise you’ve never done before, or haven’t done in a long time, start with just one set or use a weight that’s a little lighter than you think you can handle. Do that exercise a few workouts in a row, with progressively heavier weight or an extra set each time.
You want your body to get better and more efficient at dealing with the stress of exercise. That’s how you get stronger and fitter.
If you change things up too much and don’t practice the same exercises often, you’re not helping your body build the skills of exercise, and you won’t get the results you want. Plus, you’ll keep getting sore, which might make it harder for you to keep exercising consistently.
Stretching
Stretching before or after exercise is one of the most common ways to try to prevent or decrease soreness. Since it’s so popular, you would think there’d be convincing evidence that stretching is effective, but there isn’t.
A review of 12 studies (including one huge study with 2,377 participants) found that stretching before and/or after exercise didn’t improve muscle soreness compared with a control condition. Once you’re already sore, stretching can make you feel a little better, but it lasts for a very short time. As soon as you stop stretching the soreness usually comes right back.
While stretching doesn't prevent soreness, it is quick and easy to do. If it makes you feel a little better, try it. But it shouldn't be the only thing you do to manage soreness.
Cryotherapy (Basically Just Cold Water or Ice)
Icing or standing/lying in cold water (known as cold water immersion) is commonly used with athletes for better recovery. It reduces swelling and inflammation.
There’s evidence that it works. Studies have found that cold water immersion can reduce soreness, although not all studies show a benefit. Water temperatures around 10 degrees C (50 degrees F) for about 10-20 minutes immediately after exercise seem to work best for reducing soreness.
If you want to do cryotherapy at home, fill up a bathtub with cold/icy water and lie in it.
Personally I wouldn’t go to this much effort unless you’re competing and really need to recover as quickly as possible. You could just put an ice pack or bag of ice over your muscles and get a pretty similar effect.
Be aware that there's also evidence that cold water immersion might slow down muscle growth. If you're trying to build the maximal amount of muscle, it's probably a good idea to wait at least a few hours after a strength training workout before getting in a cold tub so you don't interfere with the cellular processes that create muscle growth. For the average person or for cardio sessions, I don't think you need to worry too much about this.
Massage
The theory is that massage can decrease inflammation and increase blood flow, bringing more nutrients to the area and helping to get rid of waste products to speed up recovery.
Massage might also decrease levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) and increase substances in the brain that reduce pain and boost mood, making you feel better.
A review study found that getting a massage between 2-3 hours after exercise seems to be the most effective for decreasing soreness, but they couldn’t really tell whether certain types or durations of massage were better than others.
If it’s not practical to get a massage from a professional, use a massage chair or other self-massage tool (like a foam roller) within a few hours after exercising.
Foam Rolling
Foam rolling is like a self-massage, where you use your bodyweight to press and roll over a foam roller. It's often used as a warm-up before exercise, and also as a recovery tool after exercise.
For recovery and decreased soreness, foam rolling is thought to work in a similar way to other types of massage. A review study found that foam rolling after exercise was effective at reducing soreness. In most of the studies, the worked-out muscles were foam rolled twice for between 45-60 seconds each time.
Foam rollers are inexpensive and pretty simple to use. Try foam rolling as part of your post-workout cooldown.
Exercise
If you’re already sore, light exercise can help relieve the symptoms. Light movement increases blood flow to your muscles, and blood brings nutrients with it and takes away waste products.
Exercising sore muscles might also break up any adhesions that are causing pain, and the endorphins and other substances that are released in your brain during exercise could have a pain-relieving effect.
While light exercise can make you feel better, you should be careful with high intensity exercise while you’re sore.
Studies have found that strength, coordination, and your muscles’ ability to absorb shock are reduced while you’re sore. Your body tries to protect itself against more pain and discomfort, often by changing your movement patterns. That could increase your risk of injury.
It’s a good idea to avoid high intensity exercise, like hard running, jumping, heavy weightlifting, or Olympic lifts (cleans, snatches, etc.) while you’re very sore.
Do some light exercise that activates the sore muscles, or some light cardio to increase blood flow and release endorphins. Any excuse to move more is great!