Sore Muscles

Starting a new exercise routine can be challenging.  If you’re new to working out or are returning to exercise after an injury, you may be wondering whether it’s ok to exercise with sore muscles.  Often when starting to exercise, difficult workouts can cause micro-tears in the muscle.  It’s the tears that cause the feeling of soreness.  Don’t worry though, these micro-tears cause the muscle to grow and become stronger.  Luckily, delayed onset muscle soreness doesn’t stop you from exercising for long.  You can still work out if you’re sore. 

The key to exercising with sore muscles is not to exercise the same muscle groups that are hurting.  For example, you could do a leg workout one day and exercise your upper body the next.  By doing this, you’ll still be able to get exercise and allow different parts of your body to recover and rebuild.

When working on strength, it’s important to use a workout program designed to work different muscle groups throughout the week (that's why in my program you can find the strength workouts divided by muscle groups).  This will give muscles ample time to recover before working them out again.  Total body workout days are also designed to bring blood flow to your sore muscles to aid in recovery.  With a day or two of rest and good nutrition, your muscles will repair themselves and become stronger for the next workout.  

How to reducing sore muscles

Don’t start out too fast!

Remember, strength and fitness is a gradual process.  You don’t want to cause extreme discomfort after your first session.  Rushing things because you are in a hurry to get to your goals faster will not help you to have success.

Make sure to stretch and cool down!

I know it’s so easy to skip the cool down at the end of your workout but it’s something you should always do to improve your recovery time.  Also, going for a light walk (or practicing one of my cardio walk workouts) after a tough workout to break up the lactic acid can be helpful as well.  It also allows you to reflect on and record your progress.

Keep it moving on rest days too! 

Keep your body moving on your rest days and participating in light activity can help for active recovery also.  Swimming, stretching, yoga, brisk walks just to keep your body moving will help.

Take a warm bath! 

As well as being a great way to relieve stress, a warm bath can help to increase blood flow to your muscles.  Taking a warm bath can help them recover by removing waste products and delivering nutrients to aid repair.

Make sure to stay hydrated! 

This is very important!  Staying hydrated is another great way to reduce muscle soreness.  Make sure you carry a water bottle with you and take regular sips throughout the day.

Like always, it is best to listen to your body and distinguish between muscle ache, general fatigue, and an actual injury.  If there is bruising around the site of pain or you’re worried there may be some damage, stop any activity that aggravates the area and seek medical advice.  As an alternative, you could also consider training another part of your body or performing a non weight bearing form of exercise instead like cardio.