“No pain, no profit” is a commonly used expression when preparing the body. It may also be the reason why many of us think that you need to feel pain after training to know what you have done enough.
There are many reasons why your muscles hurt after training. But contrary to common belief, you don’t necessarily have to feel pain hours or days after exercising to know that you have done a good workout.
Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is a scientific term for the pain and tenderness that muscles feel after training. Usually it happens after we are particularly strenuous, or if we are exercising, after we are unfamiliar. More common after eccentric exercise, it can occur after any kind of exercise.
These are movements that resist the load when the muscles are stretched (such as when running downhill or down stairs). Small upper limb muscles (such as the biceps and shoulders) may be unfamiliar with eccentric movements and are therefore more susceptible to DOMS.
DOMS can occur even hours after training, but usually peaks after about 2 days, depending on the intensity and amount of exercise. But while DOMS is common, it’s not clear why it happens – researchers have some theories about what’s happening.
The current scientific theory is that DOMS is associated with the following combinations:
- Mechanical damage (to the protein structure of muscle fibers),
- Damage to the membrane that surrounds the muscle fibers,
- Damage to connective tissue surrounding muscle fibers,
- The body’s inflammatory response causes further breakdown of muscle proteins, stimulating certain nerves and causing pain.
Some degree of exercise-induced muscle damage is probably needed to help build larger, stronger muscles. In fact, exercise-induced muscle damage can reduce post-exercise muscle function (up to 2 weeks in some cases), but it is less likely that you will experience the same degree of DOMS the next time you exercise.
This may also explain why people who exercise regularly do not experience DOMS so often.
Regular weight training focused on eccentric exercise (squats, deadlifts, bench presses, etc.) has also been shown to reduce the negative effects of exercise on the muscles after 10 training sessions. There are probably several reasons for this, but it’s mainly related to better muscles in protecting against injury.
The frequency and severity of a person’s experience with DOMS varies from person to person. However, older people may be more susceptible to both exercise-induced muscle damage and DOMS. This is thought to be due to the difficulty in muscle recovery after strenuous exercise.
Studies show that people with a particular genetic makeup can recover better from eccentric exercise than others who have undergone the exact same training.
Avoiding DOMS can be quite difficult if you are starting a new exercise program and your initial training is particularly intense or long lasting. Adding more quirky exercises to your training program can also lead to DOMS.
But again, pain does not necessarily mean that there was a more effective session. That means your muscles are doing something you’re not used to.
So, if you’re exercising regularly and don’t feel any pain later in the day or even for a few days after training, make sure your training is still working. You are better at dealing with and recovering from damage. That.
If you want to get stronger and stronger, focus on a principle called “progressive overload” rather than feeling that you need to train until you feel pain. This is where you gradually increase the amount of exercise you do each time, such as running additional people in an exercise or adding weights.
Progressive overload has not only been shown to be an effective way to build muscle and strength, but it may also reduce the frequency of experiencing DOMS. Studies show that regular use of progressive overloads for a few weeks during a workout is sufficient to confirm this effect.
So, instead of measuring how effective your training was based on how painful it is, try gradually increasing either the number of personnel you do each week or the amount of weight you lift. These gradual improvements in fitness and strength show how effective your previous workouts were.
David R. Clark, Senior Lecturer, Strength and Conditioning, Liverpool John Moore University. Karl Langan Evans, Postdoctoral Fellow, Liverpool John Moore University, Strength and Conditioning, and Rob Erskine, Associate Professor of Neuromuscular Physiology, Liverpool John Moore University.
This article has been republished from Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Please read the original article.
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