REDUCING MUSCLE SORENESS

Introduction:

The soreness that you feel in your muscles a day or two after a workout is something that most people are familiar with. This feeling is known as ‘Delayed Onset Muscular Soreness’ or commonly referred to as ‘DOMS’.

This common feeling is thought to be caused by microscopic tears in your muscle fibres as a result of resistance training or strenuous activity. Aside from just being quite uncomfortable, too much muscle soreness can actually negatively impact your training if you train whilst feeling sore.

Experiencing DOMS can happen for multiple reasons. Some people are more prone to experiencing DOMS no matter what they do. However, if you experience this soreness on a regular basis, it could be a sign that you are actually training your muscles too much and not allowing them to recover properly. In this case, you should look to implement and practise using the ‘RPE system’ in order to not over-work your muscles and allow them to recover and grow efficiently.

If you are new to training or have taken a break, it is also very common to experience high levels of DOMS for the first few weeks of training. In this case, you should ease into your training as much as possible and allow your body to adapt.

Lots of studies show that training a muscle whilst sore can reduce the activation of your muscles, reduce the force of capacity of the muscle by up to 50% and negatively interfere with the recovery process of the sore muscle.

Therefore, it is important to take the necessary precautions in order to reduce the DOMS that you experience from training and speed up your muscle recovery process.

Some common practices that you might hear to reduce muscle soreness are to “take an ice bath and stretch”. However, although icebaths help with joint swelling and slightly help with muscle soreness, they’ve also been shown to actually hinder muscle growth and recovery by interfering with the muscle recovery process.

As for static stretching, multiple studies have shown that it actually doesn’t help with muscle soreness and may actually interfere with muscle recovery (if done post-workout).

Therefore, these two common options aren’t ideal for reducing the amount of DOMS that you experience. So what are some ways that you can help reduce your muscle soreness? Aside from the general recommendations of having an adequate protein intake and getting a good amount of regular sleep, there are a few extra steps you can take to help with your soreness.

Foam Rolling (Self-Myofascial Release):

This method for recovery is becoming increasingly popular. Aside from helping with mobility, it seems to be an effective method for also relieving muscle soreness. Although research is still lacking for a good analysis, from the 4 studies that have been done, 3 of them showed a positive effect on reducing muscle soreness and promoting recovery.

How can you apply this? A good way to apply this would be to do some foam rolling after your workout and sticking to the muscle that you trained on that day. Especially the ones that you tend to experience DOMS in the most. You could also do this foam rolling a few hours after your workout if it suits you more. 

Active recovery:

Another thing that you can do to reduce soreness is to incorporate active recovery. This includes ‘cool downs’ or very low-intensity exercises after your workout. Like foam rolling, not too many studies have looked into this yet, but of the few studies that have found that “active recovery (performed either directly after or workout or in the days following a workout) significantly reduces muscle soreness.”

A good way to apply this would be to do 5-10 minutes of a ‘cool down’ after your workout. Especially on days where you train your legs. For example, cycling on a bike lightly for 5 minutes after your workout. This ‘cool down’ should not be tiring to do but just to stimulate the muscles that you have worked. This could be done after your foam rolling if you are going to do that aswell. 

Supplements:

Although there are a lot of supplements out there that claim to “enhance your muscle recovery and reduce muscle soreness!”, the truth is that research is quite inconclusive on these. 

However, the research behind Omega-3 is quite promising. Not only has Omega-3 been shown to “improve anabolic signalling which likely enhances muscle repair and muscle growth”, but a lot of other studies show that supplementation of around 1-3g daily of Omega-3 “significantly reduces delayed onset muscular soreness”. This shows that taking 1-3g of high-quality Omega-3 supplements and or increasing your fish intake can be a good way of improving overall recovery.

Caffeine ingestion pre-workout also has been shown to reduce muscle soreness. However, these studies used a very high dose of caffeine for testing. These studies are promising however aren’t accurate when applied to everyday life.

Some other supplements which have shown a positive effect on reducing muscle soreness are:

-Taurine

-L-Citruline

-L-Glutamine