As I sit here with crippling delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) from Tuesday’s squat session, I got to thinking about soreness and how it’s been misrepresented on both ends of the spectrum by coaches and trainers.
One side (the no pain, no gain side) of the coaching continuum uses soreness as a form of self-validation. When their clients complain about being brutally sore after a workout, these coaches puff themselves up. “See? It’s working!” And clients believe it, so it becomes a sort of sick, twisted retention strategy.
The other side (the “functional,” “evidence based,” or whatever buzzword you want to use) wags a condescending finger at anyone who even utters a word about soreness. “Soreness isn’t an indicator of a good workout!” they yell as they push their Coke bottle glasses up their nose and dive back into their favorite research journal.
Surely the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Here are a few random thoughts on DOMS:
Is DOMS a worthwhile training pursuit?
Yes and no. Training to get sore just for the sake of getting sore would be silly. I could go pull my hamstring playing pickup basketball and get plenty sore, but I won’t get any bigger or stronger.
Perhaps the number one cause of DOMS is exercise novelty. When you do an exercise you’ve never done before (or haven’t done in a long time), you get really sore. You could constantly switch up the exercises you’re doing, get sore all the time, but see minimal progress in strength or size because of the lack of consistency and progressive overload.
DOMS is a classic example of correlation, not causation. DOMS is often a byproduct of a lot of good things happening, including the three mechanisms associated with hypertrophy (increased muscle growth):
- Mechanical tension (i.e., straining under a heavy load)
- Metabolic stress (i.e., the “pump”)
- Muscle damage (i.e., the breakdown of muscle tissue)
If you’re training produces all these things, you’ll probably get sore on a regular basis. Soreness will decrease as you adapt to whatever training you’re doing, so if you NEVER get sore anymore, perhaps it’s time to switch up some things, like the exercises you’re doing, the rep ranges you’re using or the weight on the bar. Or maybe you’re just not working as hard as you should.
Should you train when you’re still sore?
I get asked this question a lot by new lifters who inevitably feel like they’ve been hit by a bus after their first session. Even if we take it kind of easy, without fail, the DOMS swoops in with a vengeance. The answer is absolutely you should still train, for a few reasons.
Reason number one: exercise is active recovery. Your lymphatic system is largely responsible for clearing inflammation, cellular debris and other byproducts of intense exercise out of your body. It’s a passive system stimulated by muscle contraction, meaning it doesn’t work all by itself like your cardiovascular and respiratory systems. You’ll only reduce inflammation and “take out the garbage” if you move around. “Motion is the lotion” as many physical therapists like to say. If you’re brutally sore heading into a workout, you’ll probably feel a lot better afterward.
Reason number two: if you wait to train until you’re not sore again, you’ll probably wait too long between workouts to keep the progress going. Novice lifters especially will return to baseline levels of strength very quickly. Like I’ve talked about often in the past, advanced lifters can get away with more time off and less work before their gains start to disappear. Beginners on the other hand need to gain momentum and keep the foot on the gas in the early stages of their training journey. Waiting until the DOMS is gone is waiting too long.
What can you do to make DOMS go away?
DOMS is unpleasant to say the least. Going up and down stairs, getting down on the floor to play with my daughter, and getting in and out of my truck has been like pulling teeth the past 48 hours.
Some people try to be proactive. They do some light stretching post-workout. They go for a light jog or bike ride to “flush out lactic acid” after training (spoiler alert: this happens anyway in a few minutes after you stop training). Admirable, but ultimately useless.
The damage is done, literally. You can’t undo the muscle damage and inflammation that you’ve created, at least not right away.
What can you do? Eat. Sleep. Move around a little. That’s about it.
Your body will recover as quickly as you give it the resources to do so. You need protein to provide the raw materials to repair muscle tissue, and carbohydrates to trigger an anabolic response and replenish the muscle glycogen you used while training. You need to sleep to expose your body to high levels of human growth hormone. And you should move around a little bit to get that lymphatic system doing its thing.
Just know that your post-workout jog to reduce soreness is only useful if you’re running to Chipotle to take down a double-steak, double-chicken burrito with extra white rice.