What To Do When You're Sore 29/84

Guys...Jesus Christ my legs hurt today. On Friday, to complete my first week of the ADB Workout, I hit an early morning leg day that definitively has me walking funny today. This gave me the idea to post about some strategies for what to do about muscular soreness. Sometimes there isn't anything you can do, but sometimes there is. I'll talk about what soreness really is, how to try and prevent soreness, how much is too much, and if you can workout or not when you're sore.

Everyone has experienced this muscular soreness at some point in their life. This soreness is called Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness or DOMS and it can be a huge pain in the ass (literally). DOMS is often misunderstood and there has been some really bad information floating around about it in the past. For starters, DOMS has nothing at all to do with lactic acid, and lactic acid is in no way a bad thing, it's actually a really good thing. DOMS is actually created by micro-damage to muscle tissue. Once the tissue is damaged, one of the first steps to healing is to prevent the fibers from moving. Your body creates substance to hold the fibers in place, similar to a scab, so that your body can heal it. This is why your muscles get so stiff when you're sore and why stretching seems to help (but usually doesn't). When you are working out soreness from your muscles, what you're really doing is breaking up those "scabs".

Knowing this can help us understand what actions we do are going to cause DOMS. Soreness is almost always caused by the eccentric portion of an exercise, or, the part where the muscle is lengthening. Think of going down on a squat or bringing the bar to your chest on a bench press. This is when the most damage is done to the muscle, meaning that it is going to be the most sore. This probably sounds like something you would want to avoid right? No body likes being sore, right? Not necessarily. Healing tissue damage is one way to make a muscle bigger (called hypertrophy) and while it's not the only way, it is the most effective. This means adding extra effort to the eccentric portion of an exercise can be a rather effective way to make a muscle bigger. This also means that using exercises that have little to no eccentric portion will not make you very sore at all. This is a great tool to have for athletes who need to compete, people who are already sore, or for people who just want a good workout while still being able to walk the next day. Some examples of low-to-no eccentric exercises are; box jumps, medicine ball throws, biking, rowing, and pretty much anything with a sled.

Outside of avoiding the eccentric, there are a few other tactics you can implore to help prevent soreness from you workouts, and they're mostly dietary. The biggest one is to make sure you're eating enough protein. Having the resources necessary will enable your body to be able to heal those muscles up as fast as possible. Some people (a lot actually) like to supplement with BCAAs for this same purpose but I think they're overrated, despite being one of the most popular supplements on the market right now. I do have my intraworkout protein shake to help me with this as well, but that's more for muscle breakdown prevention. Making sure to eat protein before and after a workout can help with soreness as well. Outside of eating enough protein, the biggest thing you can do to prevent soreness is to workout consistently. You may have noticed that the further you get into a workout program, the less sore you get. I warn all of my new people about this on our first workout, because they're probably going to be pretty sore, even though we're not doing much. If you don't want to get sore, just make sure you're getting to the gym! Sure, you'll be sore on the first week of each new program, but after that it will subside and you'll be fine again until you start something new.

DOMS has that "D" in it for a reason and that is because it will usually take some time to show up. For most people its about 24-48 hours after the workout that you really start to feel it. I, personally, am a 2-day soreness kind of guy. I am always the most sore 2 days after a workout and that means that if I'm sore the next day then I am in for a bad time. During these first few days of soreness, there's really not a ton you can do about it. Stretching and foam rolling may give you some temporary relief, but usually when it's early, the stiffness will just come back. You really just need to give it some time, but after a few days, the best thing to do is some light exercise with those muscles again. This will promote blood flow to those areas which will decrease healing time. You want to avoid too much exercise on sore muscles when you're still super sore but once the soreness becomes more mild then working those muscles can be the best thing for you.

All in all soreness is kind of a good thing. It means you did some damage and those muscles and they  will come back just a little bit bigger. Now, that doesn't mean that soreness is an indicator of a good or bad workout, but being sore can be a sign of good things. Make sure you're eating your protein, getting a good warmup, and getting some blood to those muscles and I promise you'll survive your next leg day. If you want to see the workout I've been doing then you can check it out HERE or if you're a lady looking to see what I've got my wife doing right now then you can see that one HERE. Finally, My Free Fat Loss and Free Muscle Gaining Tips are almost done! And I have to say that they're looking pretty awesome. Those will be free to anyone who subscribes here. Right now you'll also get a free copy of the Nutrition Template that I use for myself and my clients. Subscribing will also let you join the private Facebook group that I just opened (I fixed the link). This group will allow for much more engagement with each other than my Facebook page so I can make sure you guys are getting all of the info you need.

See you tomorrow!

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