If you're on a fitness or weight loss journey, you're likely in the throes of building a workout routine that balances cardio and strength training to help you burn fat and build muscle.
And, along the way, you've probably been greeted with incredibly sore muscles the morning after a workout. Your body is aching, you can barely lift your arms and walking up stairs has become a workout in itself.
This is what Russian scientist, Ivan Pavlov, referred to as "muscular gladness". Or, in simple terms, sore muscles. Wondering if you should be working out with sore muscles?
Well, that's what we're going to answer. Not all muscle soreness is created equal and knowing how to tell the difference between delayed onset muscle soreness and the first signs of injury is important for keeping you on your fitness journey.
What causes muscle soreness after exercising?
Experiencing sore muscles a day or two after working out is normal and it's known as delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS).
When you put your body under significant stress through high-intensity training or resistance, your muscle fibres experience tiny, microscopic tears. While this sounds negative, muscle damage is a good thing.
These tears help your muscles heal and adapt and allow them to get stronger or bigger. In response to this damage, your immune system goes into cleanup mode, increasing inflammation in the area.
According to the American College of Sports Medicine, DOMS typically occurs at least 12-24 hours after a workout [1]. The paint tends to peak about 1-3 days after your session, at which point you can expect it to ease up.
Knowing this time frame for DOMS is important because it helps tell the difference between aching muscles and acute muscle soreness, which is the burning sensation you usually feel in a muscle while exercising.
This soreness is a result of the quick buildup of metabolites during intense exercise and will disappear as soon as or shortly after you stop exercising.
Should you exercise with sore muscles?
So, it’s been 2 days since you pushed yourself in the gym, and you’ve woken up with muscles that feel tender to the touch, swollen, heavy, and fatigued. You don't want to skip your next workout but it's left you wondering if you should be working out with sore muscles.
Generally, yes, it should be fine to work out with sore muscles. It might seem counterintuitive but it can actually aid recovery and help flush out the metabolites (the byproducts of damage) more efficiently.
The key is working out in a manner that doesn’t place greater strain on your muscles but rather serves as a form of active recovery and getting blood moving through the affected area, as oxygenated blood can help the immune cells repair faster.
Light aerobic activity like walking or jogging can help relieve symptoms of DOMS, so try to opt for more low-intensity workouts in the day or 2 after an intense workout.
However, if you want to get back into the gym for another high-intensity workout, it’s important to consider your range of movement.
While discomfort from muscle soreness can be expected, if the tightness experienced is impacting your form or hindering the full range of motion on a particular limb, then you should avoid any moves that over-exert that muscle. For example, if your quads are so tight that you’re pitching forward when doing a squat, then don’t do a squat-heavy workout.
Soreness vs injury: How to tell the difference
Muscle soreness is to be expected after a workout, even if you're engaging in regular exercise. But, if you're increasing the resistance or trying a new workout that is unfamiliar to your body, you can expect DOMS to occur as your body adapts to the changes.
Even so, navigating aches and pains can leave many wondering if it’s safe to keep working out or if it's the beginning of an injury. Here’s how to tell the difference.
1. What does it feel like?
DOMS typically makes your muscles feel achy, stiff or tight. They'll often feel tender and fatigued, or possibly even have a burning sensation, and this feeling can be attributed to a wide muscle group that you worked hard during the session.
In contrast, an injury is more of a sharp muscle pain that can be pinpointed to a specific spot. With an injury, your normal functioning and movement may be limited, and you may experience sharp pain that’s deep and severe while performing certain tasks.
Significant swelling is also an indication injury has occurred and will be localised to the site of injury.
2. The pain isn’t subsiding
With DOMS, the soreness should peak around 24-48 hours after activity and will generally subside after 3 days. If you're dealing with an injury, you'll likely still be experiencing pain after 3 days and in some cases, it may have become worse.
General soreness can be an indication that an injury is present so while active recovery helps relieve symptoms of DOMS faster, if you return to activity and the pain immediately returns or worsens, it serves to indicate an injury is apparent.
3. When did the pain occur?
Acute injuries or muscle strain can occur during exercise and you'll be aware instantly, or it may build up gradually over days or weeks in the case of overuse injuries.
Muscle soreness, on the other hand, is unlikely to be experienced as pain or soreness during your workout. Instead, you can expect to feel the soreness within a few hours or up to 48 hours after your intense workout.
4. Observe your body's reactions to physical activity
As we mentioned before, DOMS responds positively to active recovery and light aerobic exercise as oxygenated blood helps to flush out inflammation and aid recovery. It’s for this reason that many use the phrase “motion is lotion” about DOMS.
With an injury, though, movement should exacerbate the pain. If gentle movement makes it feel worse, it’s more likely that you’re dealing with an injury.
Tips for working out with sore muscles
You don't have to shun the gym completely when muscle soreness occurs but it helps to change tact for the types of exercise you engage in so you're not overexerting the already sore muscle group.
Consider these training tips when dealing with sore muscles.
- Try active recovery workouts: Non-strenuous movement and light aerobic workouts can help blood circulation, which reduces inflammation and helps minimise muscle soreness. This will also help keep your joints lubricated [2]. Walking, stretching, low-impact cycling, yoga and mobility work are all great ways to help recover from sore muscles.
- Roll it out: The combination of stretching and soft tissue foam rolling can help ease sore muscles and reduce inflammation post-workout. Applying light to moderate pressure on your sore muscles can help kickstart the recovery process and may help prevent DOMS [3].
- Exercise other muscle groups: If you did an upper body session and are now experiencing DOMS, switch it up and train the legs with squats, deadlifts, and lunges which won’t see your form jeopardised due to sore arms. It’s a great tip when structuring your workout program and means you can tailor your sessions to accommodate this fatigue and soreness.
How to relieve DOMS
Regardless of whether you push through a workout or not, you can speed up the recovery process from DOMS with these tips.
1. Warm up thoroughly
Ensuring that you're warming up with dynamic stretching before a workout session may help reduce DOMS as you move muscles and joints through a full range of motion. This also allows your body to prepare for the workout ahead in a low-stress manner. Likewise, cooling down after a workout may help muscle recovery.
2. Sleep is important
It can be easy to deprioritise sleep but it also plays an important role in your recovery as this is when your body repairs. Try to aim for 7-8 hours of sleep per night for adequate recovery.
3. Massage is key
According to a 2020 review, sports massages were found to have a small but significant effect on DOMS symptoms and overall range of motion [4].
It's also been found to be the most effective way to reduce DOMS and perceived fatigue as it can improve blood flow to stress tissues and prevent fluid building up in muscles.
4. Exercise different muscle groups
If you’re repeating the same exercises every day, your muscles are going to become fatigued and overused from the repetitive movements and struggle to recover from DOMS.
To prevent this from happening, try to focus on different muscle groups across your workouts and mix things up.
Be sure to opt for an upper/lower body split, where you alternative between upper and lower body moves every other day, and incorporate different exercises.
5. Train regularly
DOMS is more likely to occur for those new to exercise or when you're undertaking a new workout that your body isn't familiar with. Staying consistent with your training will reduce the likelihood of DOMS and will help you work towards your weight loss goals.
7. Eat a balanced diet
According to a 2019 study, foods high in antioxidants can help reduce the symptoms of DOMS and overall inflammation in the body [6].
The best foods to help relieve sore muscles are tart cherry juice, watermelon juice, ginger, pomegranate, black currant extract and ginseng. Supplements like protein, branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) and creatine can also help reduce DOMS.
If you’re exercising and experiencing muscle soreness, it’s best to reduce your intake of processed foods, sugar, and alcohol, all of which can increase inflammation.
While DOMS is often an unavoidable fact of starting a new exercise routine, it does mean that you're using your muscles in new ways and that's something to celebrate.
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Photo credit: Pexels x Ketut Subiyanto
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