Muscle Soreness

Why are my muscles sore after a workout ? My muscles aren’t sore, so did I not workout hard enough? What causes muscles to be sore the day after a workout? All questions that I am going to attempt to answer, there are always different answers to questions based on different peoples experience.

So here are mine based on my knowledge and experience.

If you are new to a certain exercise then you may well be aching the next day, this is due to the Muscle fibers tearing. That is what causes the muscle soreness and it is normal if the muscle has been worked hard. As the fibers repair the pain goes away usually within a couple of days. This doesn’t mean that you have done anything wrong during your workout, just that your muscles are not use to the exercise. This is why it is better to start off easy with new exercise and build up, this will cut down on the soreness experienced.

If you feel no pain the day after a workout, this does not mean you haven’t worked out hard enough, your muscles are just use to the exercises you were doing, they are still getting there workout and you are still getting the benefit. A good idea is to have two or three different workout routines and every so often change them around so your muscles get hit from a different angle on a regular basis.

If you can hardly move the next day and are in a lot of pain just doing simple tasks, then you have definitely over done it, so re-evaluate your work out. There is plenty of advice for trying to treat or prevent muscle soreness, like an ice cold bath after your workout ( no thanks), I don’t think there is any real proof this actually works. Stretching before a workout, now this I agree should always be done to get those muscles ready for their workout, but it is more to stop muscle injury like pulls and strains rather than soreness. Whether you have stretched and warmed up or not, if you over do the workout you will still get muscle soreness.

I think I have answered those three questions in this post, but remember this is only my opinion and based on my own experiences. There are plenty of studies and experiments that have been done to try an understand muscle soreness, many of them conflicting. I just know one simple fact, over do it and you feel the pain.