Relief for Muscle Soreness
08/30/2012 Leave a comment
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Muscle soreness following exercise is not uncommon. Delayed onset muscle soreness is the stiff, sore feeling in your muscles the next day after a vigorous workout. Muscle soreness is a natural reaction in response to stress or micro-tears in the muscle tissue. It usually goes away after 2 to 3 days. Athletes and beginners alike can experience muscle soreness. Is there anything you can do to prevent delayed onset muscle soreness? What can you do to relieve muscle soreness after it develops?
Warming up by doing light to moderate exercise before a workout can help to prepare your muscles for more vigorous exercise. Stretching before and after exercise can also help to prevent or reduce the intensity of muscle soreness. Cool down after exercise to help your muscles recover faster. Cool down by doing some light exercise, such as walking for about 10 minutes and stretching, helps to remove lactic acid from your muscle tissues. Lactic acid builds up during exercise and contributes to muscle soreness.
Once you start to feel muscle soreness, apply ice to the affected muscle. Massage, gentle stretching and anti-inflammatory pain relievers can also help. The good news is that once your muscles adapt to a specific level of exercise, you should not experience muscle soreness again after engaging in the same level of exercise intensity. Your muscles may be sore again if you increase the level of intensity of your workout.
You can also experience muscle soreness if you try a new exercise that works a muscle or muscle group you haven’t focused on before. To reduce the level of muscle soreness or maybe even avoid muscle soreness, gradually increase the intensity of your workout. When you are ready to move your workout to the next level, increase repetitions by 5 or fewer repetitions or increase the length of your workout by 5 minutes or less. Perform new exercises using correct form to avoid injury and reduce soreness.
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