Extreme soreness can be experienced at times when you engage your muscles unnecessary.
The greatest magic of exercising is that muscles breakdown first before it builds or become stronger. It sometimes might induce some sore on your muscles and feel a little achy. Yes it would be normal to feel that but there is a normal one and an extreme one. When you experience a post-exercise soreness, it is technically referred to as delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS).
DOMS usually manifests between 48 and 72 hours after a workout. This is the time your body exhaustively work to repair muscle fibers torn down during the exercise. There are different extents of pain which depends on what amount of damage has been caused. It also involves factors like the genetics and hydration level. However, don’t take it light when you have frequent sores after exercises – this might regenerate into another disease level hard to cure.
Some researches have shown that muscles can experience atrophy when the body continues with extreme sores. Atrophy is a condition of continuous muscle breakdown. This condition is the muscle has been overworked and it cannot repair itself adequately. You have no better results on an intense sore, no and basically you need an adequate time to recover to avoid missing out on additional days of training later.
Workouts with a lot of eccentric exercises will leave you hobbling the following day. There are two phases in a strength exercise which are the eccentric (the lowering part) and the concentric (the lifting part). In eccentric phase, you create tears in the muscle fibers. Your muscles work strongly in this phase. There is production of high force in the muscles which numbs down the fatigue sensation and eventually keeps you exercising. Only disadvantage is that you are likely to keep out of training order and overdo your workouts.
The main or best way to keep off soreness is time; give time for recovery and to keep soreness to minimal pain. However, there are also few things you can do to hopefully numb the pain as you give yourself time. They may speed soreness relief in the process. Below are the five tips that will help relieve your misery:
- Get Enough Protein
Protein is an important nutrient to build and maintain muscles. Its role is big in helping the body muscles to recover from a vigorous workout. This doesn’t mean you need an excessive amount of protein. While you ought to be eating sufficient protein all the time to prevent recurring or long-lasting soreness from your workouts, it is helpful to double check that you are eating enough protein after the damage is done.
Those working out should have an approximate target of 1.4 to 2 grams of protein per kilogram bodyweight. An active person with weight of 150 pounds, they can have protein amount of about 95 to 136 grams per day. They can split up this between their meals too.
- Proceed with light movement
The fact that activity enhances circulation and improves blood flow in the entire body bases it important to continue with exercises. However, caution in place is that if you continue intensively on your sore.
We always think that increased flow of blood and nutrients to the muscles speed up repair. This eventually reduces DOMS. Though we need to do more research, we have adequate knowledge on floor on how blood carries oxygen and particularly amino acid which are units of muscle building – they do repair muscles. If they get faster to where they are physiologically required, they will initiate faster recovery or muscle building, and the body is likely to recover faster.
This may not indicate that you can return to your regularly scheduled workout programming. We might suggest for you a milder activity like just walking or hopping on gym bike – it is a minimum strain. If you well manage it then we may recommend you for some very light strength training – getting you back on workout track. Strength training might be productive at this phase because it ensures an adequate flow of blood, and muscles are likely to receive blood abundantly.
Because you don’t want to do more harm on your muscle fibers, light from the talk point should be very light. You can try using between 25 to 50 percent of the weight you can lift on your normal health situation. You can as well just workout with your bodyweight.
- Hydrate Thoroughly
Drinking is a very vital step. A certain research showed that there was a correlation between dehydration and increased muscle soreness. Water functions by helping the body to flush out waste products. And when muscles break down, they release waste products and toxins. These products need to be purged out of the body. The products like hydrogen ions and creatinine kinase produced can be worse if they continue around the muscle because they are associated with extra soreness.
While there is much research gaps, the existing knowledge show with increase in dehydration soreness increases but when you hydrate the body, you will be minimizing the soreness. Your liver and kidney work to filter out toxins. Hydrating your body is essential to aid these organs to perform effective detoxification. Staying hydrated will help you move along this process.
- Use Heat and Ice To Relieve Pain
You are bound to practice what works better for you. When it comes to the debate about heat therapy and cold therapy it narrows to an individual therapy where one chooses a remedy working better for him – it is temporary in nature. But when you are on a terrible sore, you can accept all remedies that buy you relief. Mostly, ice helps to reduce the swelling that sometimes comes along with extreme soreness. To reduce the swelling can help reduce some pain-causing tension. Also, if you elevate your sore legs, it can help you with the severity of this condition.
Heat can minimize pain and tension induced by the sores. Relaxing your sore part in a warm bath will likely make you feel better, continue doing that. It can also increase your blood circulation.
- Stretch Lightly
Mark you, keyword on this is light. Doing some light stretching is good, but overstretching the muscle when it is too tight can actually cause the muscle to come back even tighter because the body is trying to resist it. Stretching out helps to release tightness and increases your range of motion when you are sore. This makes you feel better; however, it is not actually healing the tears in your muscles or making them repair any faster, but as they say it, more isn’t always more. Just be careful and cautious about it.
How do you know how far this has gone? Try stretching until it feels very tight then release it after around 5 to 10 seconds. Repeat that method without ever getting to the point where it feels unbearable. And if it is too painful like it’s bound to be even thinking about stretching, don’t force yourself out, skip it. Just get some temporary relief if it can be possible.
Time is Important Overall
When you experience sharp pain during your exercises and the soreness does not improve after some days, it means you have some injury. You need to seek the advice of a medical professional. It is important to watch for signs of something more serious, maybe, a syndrome called rhabdomyolysis which occurs when the over-worked muscle fibers die and release the protein myoglobin into the bloodstream. This can lead to kidney damage and its failure. This is a medical emergency, and along with extreme muscle pain, weakness, and swelling, the main sign is often cola-colored urine. Get to the medical professional sooner if you notice these signs.
As for me, I managed my DOMS by spending time taking my dog for walks however painful it was. I switched this between heat and ice treatment, and waited for that comfortable and sweet relief. Yes, the relief came in like a miracle.