What is exercise soreness?

As a physically active person, you rarely recover from exercise pain. Some cope more easily, while others can barely get out of bed after a serious leg workout.

In this article, we thought of going through training soreness and what training soreness really is in the following four points:

• What happens in the muscle during exercise pain?
• Are training sores dangerous?
• Is exercise soreness a sign that we are building muscle?
• Can you exercise with exercise pain?
• Avoid training soreness
• What can we do to treat exercise soreness?
• Summary - What is training soreness?

What happens in the muscle during exercise pain?

Exercise soreness, also called DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) is a reaction to the inflammation that occurs in the muscle after an extra large work effort. The pain is usually experienced between 24 and 72 hours and is at its worst after around 48 hours.

During physical exertion, high tensions are created in the working muscles. These tensions lead to small microscopic damages in the muscle tissue.

After the muscle work is completed, protein breakdown occurs in the muscle so that the body can repair the damage that has occurred. During the repair of the muscle, an inflammation process takes place which we can experience as painful and that is what we call training pain.

Are training sores dangerous?

Exercise soreness is usually considered harmless and a normal reaction to physical activity . It is a natural recovery process and a sign that the body is repairing itself. That the pain is felt up to five days after the training session is completely normal and nothing you need to be afraid of.

Is exercise soreness a sign that we are building muscle?

Exercise soreness can be a sign that the muscles are undergoing adaptations and growing.
But rather than a sign of increased muscle mass, training soreness is a signal that the muscles have been broken down during a completed training session. It is important here to remember that muscle building also occurs after light physical activity that does not cause any searing pain.

With this, we want to be careful to say that you don't need to worry about your progress if you don't get soreness, you probably did a good enough job anyway. A well-trained muscle trained in similar exercises does not give off as much soreness as an untrained muscle in a new exercise.
In addition, we must remember that all bodies are different, so there is no conclusion that applies to everyone.

Can you exercise with exercise pain?

Exercising on existing soreness is not recommended. Above all, because the training then extends the muscle's recovery time and impairs its reconstruction. So if you can't stay away from the gym, take the opportunity to spend time on muscle groups that haven't had to work as much!

If you choose to exercise with soreness, we recommend that you start with a thorough warm-up to increase blood circulation in the muscles and speed up recovery. I personally tend to wear slightly warmer clothes on the days I work out with soreness, to ensure I stay warm and the muscles recover faster. Check out our wide range of warm and comfortable training clothes here!

Avoid training soreness

As I said, exercise pain occurs when the strain on our muscles becomes "too great". Great exertion leads to many microscopic damages to the muscle tissue and extensive inflammation afterwards.

By gradually increasing the training intensity, the muscles have time to adapt to the increased load and the training pain does not have to be as extensive.

The "Repeated Bout Effect" or the "Repetition effect" is called the phenomenon when repeated work leads to the muscles getting used to the load of the work and not developing training pain to the same extent.
This together with good hydration and a balanced diet creates good conditions for the body to avoid prolonged muscle inflammation.

What can we do to treat exercise soreness?

There are four things you can do to get rid of exercise soreness once it occurs and they are:

1. Rest
2. Cryotherapy
3. Light physical activity
4. Anti-inflammatory drugs

Rest

First of all, the muscles need time to recover. Good sleep, food and peace and quiet (avoid stress) are always a good basis for getting rid of exercise pain.

Cryotherapy
If you want to increase the body's ability to quickly get back on track, cryotherapy has been shown to have a positive effect on recovery.
What you can do then is, for example, use ice packs and apply to the muscle, take a cold bath to cool down parts or the whole body, or alternatively rinse the tired muscles with cold water to relieve the pain.

Light physical activity

Even light exercise such as walking, dynamic mobility, cycling and/or leisurely swimming should help increase blood circulation without significantly straining the muscles.

Anti-inflammatory drugs

In case of very severe muscle pain, you can also consider taking anti-inflammatory drugs, but avoid overuse of painkillers.
It is only if the pain persists that you should seek medical advice.

Summary - What is training soreness?

During physical exertion, high tensions are created in the working muscles. These tensions lead to small microscopic damages in the muscle tissue and it is during the repair of the muscle that an inflammation process begins which can result in pain, as well as exercise soreness.

Training soreness is a sign that you have broken down the trained muscle, but it is important to remember that the absence of training soreness does not equate to not breaking down the trained muscle properly. Don't take training soreness as a sign of a good session because it will subside the more fit and experienced you become.

Training soreness is not dangerous, but we recommend that you train a different muscle than the one you have soreness in at the next session so that the one with soreness can rest a little more.

By gradually increasing the training intensity, the muscles have time to adapt to the increased load and the training pains do not have to be as extensive and the possibility increases to avoid training pains.

To get rid of exercise soreness there are four things to try and they are rest, cryotherapy, light physical activity and anti-inflammatories.