What to do when you’re sore

It’s never free.

Like famed leg breaker Rocky Balboa used to say ‘If you wanna dance, you pay the band, understand? You wanna borrow you gotta pay the man.’

Anything of value comes with a price. You want to get fit? There are costs.

One cost: muscle soreness. To get fit you gotta work out. Working out will make you sore from time to time. The cost of getting over muscle soreness isn’t that high: if you know what to do.

Train- Is today the first day of the rest of your life?

What is muscle soreness?

"Muscle soreness occurs because muscle and the connective tissue around it get damaged during exercise," explains Dr. Hedt. "This is completely normal and nothing to worry about, though. In fact, it's needed for muscle growth, since muscle is built back stronger during this repair process."

Now that we know what muscle soreness is, what do we do about it.

Drink water & eat protein

Water is extremely important to recovery. Thank you Captain Obvious. “Staying hydrated is especially important if you are recovering... Optimal hydration helps to reduce inflammationand swelling after an injury, brings increased blood flow and delivery of nutrients to the injured area, and aids in the removal of waste products.”

As for protein… Working out is literally breaking your muscles down in order to rebuild stronger.

What material are you rebuilding with?

Do you want muscles built from Doritos; Or from healthy protein sources like beef, tofu, beans or eggs?

Right.

Wear compression gear

Compression gear can work during and after working out.

AFTER: Compression aids with blood/lymphatic flow. Blood is carrying nourishment to your muscles; lymph is taking out the trash. Both of these circulatory mechanisms work like a pump. Adding compression increases the power of the pump.

DURING: In an experiment ‘15 soccer players wore a compression garment on one thigh and nothing on the other. The thigh with the compression had less delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). Researchers hypothesized that this was due to reduced muscle damage on the compression leg.’

The hypothesis here is that the compression gear supports the muscles leading to less initial trauma.

What kind of compression gear should you try? We talked briefly about this in THIS old post.. Start with socks or shorts for your in home collection, or come try our normatec boots at Train!

Foam Rolling

My final method to stay ahead of muscle soreness: foam rolling! Even the smart kids with PHD’s aren’t certain why it works, I just know that, personally, it works. Nothing sore muscles feel immediately better than foam rolling?

Is it working because ‘imbedded nerve receptors are being stimulated in that region… lead[ing] lead to a perceived 'releasing' effect’?

Or is it working because it flushes waste away from inflamed tissue?

Do you really care? Right. Neither do I. It feels good- to some of us (some people HATE IT). You can do it before and/or after a workout and it’s easy.

This is gonna hurt

Working out will hurt. Like I said, ain’t no free rides. Muscle soreness is part of the way we pay for a healthy bod.

With a little preparation, and a little tlc the cost gets lower.

We’ll call it a discount.