Whether your goal is weight loss or just fitness, you incorporate workouts into your routine. A good workout uplifts you, makes you feel fitter but can also leave you feeling sore!
If you’re curious about why our bodies experience soreness and what it means, read this interesting piece by Praveen Budhrani, INFS alumini and Fittr coach.
Muscle Soreness is a very common phenomenon which trainees face, majorly, under the following scenarios:
i. Just started working out
ii. Levelled up volume or intensity
iii. Resumed working out after a long break.
Here we are specifically talking about DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness), which typically develops between 12-24 hours after muscle contractions and, with peak ‘soreness’ being experienced 24-72 hours after the exercise is over.
Initially, soreness could be intense and problematic. However, it slowly turns into an indicator of a good workout for muscle growth. Trainees sense a kind of psychological pride in feeling sore from a hard workout.
We all know that Muscle Damage is one of the three main mechanisms of Muscle Growth [1] and exercise induced muscle damage has shown to cause soreness [2]. Having said that, does more soreness mean more muscle damage? Let’s check out in the next slide.
Studies have shown that soreness can occur from the activities, which don’t necessarily promote muscle growth, like long-distance running [3].
Another anecdotal example can be imagining your quads getting hit by a stick repeatedly, hitting will definitely lead to soreness in your quads but whether that will promote growth, it is highly unlikely. Further, in some cases, prolonged DOMS create problems in subsequent workouts as they are known to cause ineffective recruitment of motor tasks and force production[1] [PB2] [4]
So to conclude, DOMS may give us some indication of the effectiveness of the workout initially, however it can be ineffective to judge progress in the long run. Hence, till the time you see continuing progressing in your workouts/performance, you need not worry if you are not getting sore every time.
references
Ref:
[1] The Mechanisms of Muscle Hypertrophy and Their Application to Resistance Training
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46288878_The_Mechanisms_of_Muscle_Hypertrophy_and_Their_Application_to_Resistance_Training
[2] Changes in Perceived Recovery Status Scale Following High-Volume Muscle Damaging Resistance Exercise
https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Fulltext/2013/08000/Changes_in_Perceived_Recovery_Status_Scale.5.aspx
[3] Change in skeletal muscle stiffness after running competition is dependent on both running distance and recovery time:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5853607/
[4] Eccentric exercise and delayed onset muscle soreness of the quadriceps induce adjustments in agonist-antagonist activity, which are dependent on the motor task.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51807035_Eccentric_exercise_and_delayed_onset_muscle_soreness_of_the_quadriceps_induce_adjustments_in_agonist-antagonist_activity_which_are_dependent_on_the_motor_task
