An intensive workout or rigorous exercise can leave you feeling as if you’ve been hit by a truck by the next day. You might feel extreme exhaustion, sore and aching muscles, and nausea. This bittersweet reminder of your hard work is known as Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS).
DOMS is the delayed muscle aches and muscle pain that is caused by tiny injuries in the muscle fibers and connective tissue. It’s typical, especially for beginners or for those who are increasing their exercise intensity.
While muscle soreness induced by workouts fades after a few days, there are a few ways to fast track your muscle recovery.
Hydrate
Muscle soreness prohibits a consistent strength building and can be tough to work through, but dehydration can make the pain worse. A brief body of research shows a link between dehydration and muscle soreness or DOMS. While more research on the topic is needed, researchers and practitioners hypothesized that if dehydration increases pain, then increased levels of hydration can minimize it.
Drinking enough water can speed up the recovery period of your muscles. Additionally, enough water intake can help build endurance and tolerance for pain, as stated by the journal Psychophysiology. This is because a person in a dehydrated state usually has a radically higher perception and sensitivity to pain compared to someone who has high amounts of water intake.
Protein
Muscle fibers sustain micro-tears during exercise, which leads to sore muscles. The muscles would go through a recovery phase where the muscles are repaired. Protein plays a huge role in muscle recovery as it’s crucial in building and maintaining muscle.
This doesn’t give a chance to excessively high amounts of protein, but eating enough source of this macronutrient all the time would prevent recurring or long-lasting soreness received from your workouts. It can still be helpful to double-check that you’re eating enough protein after the damage is done.
Heating pads or Ice pack
The use of both heat and ice prevented elastic tissue damage. Heating pads open up the blood vessels, which increases blood flow and flush out some of the inflammation-related muscle soreness out of the muscles. It’s also preferable to add an ice pack to the mix as it slows down the inflammation process and reduce pain.
An effective regimen to address muscle soreness after an activity is to alternate between cold and heat reduces exercise-induced muscle pain. Apply the ice on the painful area for twenty minutes, then follow it up with heat for twenty minutes to help reduce EIMD and prevent DOMS.
Massage
A gentle massage after a rigorous exercise does not only feel good but is also the best for sore muscles. This can relieve tension in the muscle, boost blood flow, as well as increase the range of joint movement. Additionally, it’s also relaxing and a great mood-lifter.
Post-exercise massage significantly lessens the pain by reducing the release of cytokines, which are compounds that lead to the inflammation of the body as well as stimulate mitochondria in cells that promote cell function and repair.
Research on 2015 compared massaged muscles to massage-free ones. Massaged muscles were found to have more blood vessels, which may contribute to improved recovery. They also display only half of the scar tissue that non-massaged muscles do. Another study in 2014 found that regularly getting massages can eventually increase the body’s ability to fight off DOMS.
Foam Roller
Foam rolling has become a popular component for personal training and sports performance programs. According to a study by the Journal of Athletic Training, a foam roller can significantly reduce DOMS when used to massage your sore muscles after a workout. It can also improve your performance with future exercises.
Similar to massage, foam rolling on sore muscles may decrease the swelling in the muscles known as edema, and it relieves tension in the muscle’s connective tissue.
Spend about 10 to 20 minutes of the foam roller as part of your warm-up, cool-down, and even on days that you don’t work out. This may reduce muscle tenderness and decrease the impact on your dynamic movements.
Recovery Work Out
After moving your body so much, it can be tempting to cling to the couch and kick up your feet while your muscles are recovering. However, it’s more ideal not to stop exercising altogether. The muscle soreness that you’re experiencing after a workout is a sign that your muscles have been stretch and are getting stronger gradually.
You could focus on exercises targeting less affected muscles to allow the most affected muscle groups time to recover, which is possible with doing light and gentle activities. Light recovery workouts increase blood flow, which can naturally nudge the inflammatory process along such as lymphatic draining, moving immune cells, and clearing inflammatory mediators.
If you find it hard to exercise, passive recovery gives the body a chance to rest without having an impact on your abilities. Most passive recovery activities do not cause any exertion on your part. Steam rooms and very light exercise, such as a leisure walk, allow time to repair themselves while giving yourself a mental break as well.
Omalza Fitness is a family oriented strength and conditioning gym that offers different classes and even meals that will help you reach your body goals. Our roster of certified personal trainers who teach the most cutting edge, fat burning, and muscle building workouts available cares about every individual’s fitness results. Visit our website at www.omalzafitness.com or call us at 702-984-6606 to learn more.
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