Nearly every day, I walk for about an hour, varying my routes, incorporating a few hills and keeping a brisk pace to raise my heart rate. In winter, I walk up and down four flights of stairs for 30 minutes inside my condo building. Although I’ve been doing this routine for years, I still get muscle soreness in the back of my legs when I finish a workout. I used to blame aging, but it turns out that post-workout muscle soreness can be a normal part of exercising.
[Read: Tips to Restart Your Exercise Routine.]
What Causes Muscle Soreness?
David Barlow, a board certified orthopedic clinical specialist and owner of BE Fit Physical Therapy, says that soreness during or after exercising doesn’t necessarily reflect an injury. “It’s just the response of your muscles to that activity,” Barlow says.
When you challenge your muscles with weight-bearing or other strength-training exercises, you damage the muscle cells and surrounding connective tissue on a microscopic level. This damage isn’t bad, though. Rather, it sets off a series of biochemical events that repair and remodel muscle cells, making them larger and stronger.
There are two types of muscle soreness. Acute muscle soreness usually lasts for only a couple of hours.
“It’s that burning in the muscles we feel when we’re using them pretty hard, and it’s very normal,” Barlow says.
Then there’s delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), which typically occurs 24 to 48 hours after intense physical activity and can last around three days, or up to five to seven days if you tried a new workout. DOMS is caused by micro tears in the muscle and often results from unfamiliar or intensified physical activities, particularly those involving eccentric movements. This soreness is a normal part of the muscle repair process, which strengthens muscles over time. You shouldn’t see any redness, bruising or swelling.
Certain types of exercise tend to make you more sore than others. For example, walking downhill, landing from a jump, squatting, doing lunges or performing any other exercises that lengthens your muscles as they produce force usually results in the most delayed muscle soreness.
[READ 6 Expert-Approved Tips to Make Exercise a Habit]
Ways to Prevent Muscle Soreness
Because muscle soreness during or after exercising is normal, it’s not possible to prevent it, but there are ways to lessen its intensity:
— Start Slow: If you’re starting a new activity or getting back into an old activity, start slow and build up. Instead of running five miles, run one mile and get conditioned to longer runs over time. Whichever activity you’re doing, don’t start with an advanced routine.
— Don’t overdo it: Listen to your body. If you’re beginning to feel fatigued, can’t keep proper form to complete reps or just know it’s time to be done, don’t ignore these cues.
— Stretch: Do warm-up exercises to gently stretch your muscles before and after your workout. Using foam rollers and practicing yoga may also be beneficial.
— Hydrate: Drinking plenty of water is always a good idea, but especially before and after working out.
— Sleep: If you’re not getting enough regular sleep or you exercise when you’re exhausted, it may take longer for your muscles to recover.
— Eat well: A protein-rich diet will help your muscles function properly and heal themselves.
[Read: Resistance Training That Strengthen Your Muscles.]
Ways to Relieve Muscle Soreness
There are ways to aid muscle recovery and get rid of muscle soreness:
— Don’t skimp on recovery time. It’s essential to allow adequate time for muscles to recover between workouts, especially when engaging in new or intense exercise.
“If you continue to overuse a muscle, it won’t repair itself properly,” Barlow says. Not giving your muscles enough downtime can cause overtraining, physical and mental fatigue, and overuse injuries, such as stress fractures, muscle strains and joint pain. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends 48 hours of recovery between strength-training workouts, and a day off in between high-intensity interval training.
— Skip the Advil. While you might be tempted to take over-the-counter painkillers to ease the aches, they can actually delay recovery, explains Dr. Matthew Kampert, a sports medicine doctor at the Cleveland Clinic. When you have damage to the muscle from use, the body has to go through a series of steps to repair it, the first of which is inflammation. Taking NSAIDs (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) such as ibuprofen or even antihistamines to reduce inflammation and pain can hinder the activation of pathways important for muscle growth.
“If your overall goal is long term gains in muscle strength, then you wouldn’t want to inhibit that,” Kampert says. He adds that for those who have to recover quickly, like professional athletes, it’s a tradeoff of losing potential gains in order to be able to perform at the next session.
— Eat and drink right. Proper nutritional support — through adequate protein, carbohydrates and water — aid in muscle recovery and preparation for the next training session. Protein and carbohydrates consumed throughout the day aid muscle repair and muscle glycogen resynthesis, respectively, Kampert says. Glycogen is a form of glucose stored in muscles and the liver and is a main source of energy.
— Pump iron. Resistance training can also be beneficial, Kampert explains. With aerobic exercise, you’re not moving through a full range of motion and your strides are usually shorter, whereas with proper resistance training you’re moving through the full range of motion. “So resistance training can improve flexibility where cardio exercises tend to actually make muscles shorter and tighter because it’s more repetitive contractions and a shorter range of motion,” Kampert says.
— Work on flexibility. Yoga helps with breathing and activating the parasympathetic nervous system to calm the body down, Kampert says, so you get out of that elevated sympathetic state (which prepares the body for strenuous activity). “So, not only does yoga help with recovery and joint mobility range of motion, which is essential for athletic performance, it can also be a potent stimulant for muscle growth,” Kampert says.
[READ: Best Foods to Eat Before and After Your Workout.]
Nutritional Support for Muscles
Eating a healthy diet and consuming protein post-workout aids muscle repair. Protein contains amino acids that help build and repair muscles. Good sources of protein are animal products such as beef, chicken, fish and cheese, or plant-based sources such as beans, nuts and seeds.
When it comes to supplements (such as magnesium), Kampert says they’re beneficial only if you have a deficiency, and that taking excessive amounts of a supplement when you have an adequate supply can be detrimental.
He also notes that taking antioxidant supplements or eating antioxidant-rich foods to neutralize free radicals is a mixed bag. Those free radicals stimulate changes in the body to make it stronger, such as generating more mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell. Intense exercise releases free radicals, which can cause cell damage, but it’s the acute rise in free radicals that act as chemical signals to make the body stronger. “Where free radicals become a real problem is when they’re chronically elevated all day, all night and then you just have chronic damage,” Kampert says.
Tart cherry juice has been a go-to recovery drink because of its anti-inflammatory properties, but study findings have had mixed results. One double-blind study of 54 male and female runners found that those who drank 12 ounces of tart cherry juice twice daily for seven days before and after a race had “a significantly smaller increase in pain” compared to the placebo group. Other studies have found tart cherry juice to have no beneficial effect on exercise-induced muscle soreness. Kampert says getting an adequate night’s sleep is more beneficial.
Ways to Relieve Acute Muscle Soreness
— Active recovery: Engage in light activity such as walking, stretching or low intensity exercise to promote blood flow and oxygen to the muscles, removing the metabolic byproducts that slow recovery.
— Hydration: Drink plenty of water to prevent dehydration and help your muscles heal.
— Stretching: Gentle stretching can relieve tightness and improve flexibility.
— Cool-down exercises: Gradually decrease the intensity of your workout to help your body transition back to rest.
Ways to Relieve Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness
— Gentle stretching: After the onset of DOMS, try gentle static stretching, where you hold a muscle-lengthening stretch to its full range of motion for up to 45 seconds.
— Light activity: Activities like walking, swimming or cycling can help alleviate soreness by promoting blood circulation.
— Foam rolling: Self-myofascial release techniques (like foam rolling) can alleviate muscle tightness.
— Heat therapy: Applying heat after the initial inflammation phase can help relax and loosen tissues and stimulate blood flow.
— Massage: A professional massage can help relieve muscle tension and promote relaxation.
— Compression gear: Wearing compression clothing may help reduce soreness and swelling.
— Epsom salt baths: Soaking in a warm bath with Epsom salts can help relax muscles and reduce discomfort.
When Muscle Soreness Is More Serious
It’s important to note that post workout muscle soreness is on a spectrum, Kampert says. And there’s a point at which it can be excessive. “If someone overtrains or if they’re dehydrated, they can actually stress the muscle so much that it releases toxic components into the bloodstream,” Kampert says. He adds that this can damage the kidneys and lead to a life-threatening and rare condition called rhabdomyolysis, which causes muscle tissue to break down — the opposite of your goal when working out.
There are two other times to flag muscle soreness: One is when it occurs suddenly during a workout and gradually worsens over time — in that case, it may be a pulled muscle. If a muscle is pulled to the point of severe pain that doesn’t seem to subside with rest and home remedies like icing, or if it’s causing disability or instability, that warrants a trip to a sports medicine specialist.
Second is when muscle soreness, doesn’t resolve after a few days, worsens over time or is accompanied by progressive weakness, numbness, tingling, bruising or slurred speech. These are warning signs that something more serious may be going on, anything from the flu virus to hypothyroidism, Lyme disease, lupus or something else, so see a doctor and have it evaluated.
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Proven Ways to Relieve Muscle Soreness originally appeared on usnews.com
Correction 09/30/24: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the reason for proper hydration.
