Soreness
 

Should you be sore right after you workout? What about the next day? Can you judge how good a workout you got by how sore you are? Usually after I workout im really sore for two or three days, should I still be sore doing your workout?

sometimes im sore while im working out but its not from past workouts its from the current one. you should be sore the day after you workout 2 3 days is usually how long it takes me to come back to normal depending on where im training. excellent question by the way ive noticed that noone ever mentions anything about being sore or at least anything that ive read does

I am guessing from your question that you are rather new to working out. If you just started or are starting again after a long break than yes, being sore after a workout is very common. It is not uncommon for your body to be sore for a few days after a hard workout when they aren't used to being worked.

A good way to help minimize soreness is to have a good Post Workout shake containing your whey protein and simple carbs such as dextrose/maltodextrin in a 2:1 ratio. Also including some glutamine will help speed muscle recovery.

I seldom get sore, at least to the point I know your talking about. Like Sleazy said a good supplementation program which includes a good Post workout shake can eliminate alot of soreness. Soreness is not always a gauge as to how good your workout is. I will usually feel some soreness. It's more of a tight/blown up feeling. If your new you will generally feel alot of soreness. Changing your routine around can cause some soreness as your hitting your muscles different ways. Sometimes you don't feel the part you did until at least 24 hrs later or longer and sometime sooner. The body is differnt all the time. As long as your trained hard your fine.

also after a few years of training im sure your body gets used to it and heals faster, i assume this since inside the arnold encyclopedia his competitive program includes legs everynight i believe. but also it could be that legs heal faster than other parts of the body

Question # 1:The DOMS that is felt the day after, or even not until 2 days after, is most likely a result of an inflammatory response. Prostaglandins are released in the tissue which hyper-sensitize the nerves. This is not the only reason but most research seems to agree that this is the most likely mechanism.

Microtrauma can occur with or without this type of soreness. At the same time, a certain degree of growth can also occur with or without microtrauma depending on how you define microtrauma. It isn't necessary to have major microtrauma. We only need to disrupt the membranes enough to get satellite cells activated and fusing with existing fibers. Without this step, the fiber may enlarge slightly, but it cannot grow significantly because of a fixed nuclear to sarcoplasmic ratio. Unless new nuclei are added from satellite cells, the volume of the fiber will not increase beyond rather small increments.

So my point is that although DOMS, microtrauma, and hypertrophy are all related, they are not entirely dependant on one another.

However, a low level of DOMS is a good indicator of what kind of stimulus you created for the tissue and usually indicates that you are in the process of growth if you can maintain an adequate stimulus over time. I like to be a little sore thorughout the entire cycle. When my training is too infrequent and/or my increments are too small, the soreness usually goes away and gains "seem" (this is subjective) to be slower. Then again, I have made good gains at times with little or no soreness...

Question #2: Absolutely not. There is no way you can guage the effectiveness of your workouts on how sore you are or DOMS.

Getting sore from training is like sweating from training. It often accompanies training but can't effectively be used as a measure of the effectiveness of the workout. They are related, but not "correlated".

This does not stop people from using DOMS as their measure of the effectiveness of the workout. This is not a bad thing! Nor is looking for sweat a bad thing to do when trying to tell if you're working hard enough.

The problem comes when people change their workouts inappropriately based on signs of soreness. An effective workout doesn't necessarily lead to soreness. The effectiveness of a workout depends on what type of workout is imposed on tissue that is at a certain level of conditioning (i.e. resistant to damage).

I personally like to maintain a very slight level of soreness at all times. The kind of soreness that most people might describe as simple stiffness.

Arnold was on the sauce. If I was taking all that gear I'd be doing his advanced workout in that infernal book... ;)

Why are you feeling "sore"?
 

Hey,

You should figure out why you are feeling "sore" in the first place...It could be because you aren't warming up properly, to get the muscles ready for the heavy work you are unloading on them. It could be because you are attempting too heavy of a weight. It could be because you are using far too many reps and are breaking down the muscles too much with high reps, when you would be better suited to keep your reps down and your weight up. As some other posters have said, you may just need to adjust your post work out shake/supplements.

Can you list your work outs that are causing this pain? When you feel pain after a work out, it's not actually the muscles hurting. It's everything else (tears in the joints/ligaments/tendons). It's okay to have a little muscle tear in these areas, but you need to be able to tell the difference between a minor tear and a major injury. I should know, when I was a begginer at BB I tore the tendon right off of the inside of my right elbow. It swole to the size of an orange and I was such a work out fanatic that I just lowered my weights and kept on working out. (mistakenly thinking I had simply over worked the injury).

If you are just feeling an over all body ache after working out, it's most likely just your body getting used to the new trauma you are forcing on it. You will adapt and the pain will go down.

Remember, your body knows better than all of us (even the more advanced experts on here) so learning to read it is the most valuable tool you can ever have.

Keep us posted.


Raven