Workout soreness can be the number one reason people avoid starting an exercise program. If we have exercised before and then taken a short break, we all know starting back can cause unbearable soreness. Here is a short analogy of what causes muscle soreness and tips on how to recover faster to help your workout program be more enjoyable.
The one common mistake that I find most new exercisers doing is pushing their bodies to limit on the first session back to the gym. There is a high percentage of people that never return back to the gym after Day 1. Interestingly enough our old competiveness comes out and flashbacks to highschool sports pushes us over the edge. The bad thing is the next 24-72 hours, we have found new muscles that are screaming help!
Muscle soreness is caused by micro-tears of the muscle fibers caused by a certain activity. The common recovery of these muscle fibers is 24-72 hours. Now there are 6 factors to keep in mind to help us recover faster from our fitness programs.
1. Stretching. For all fitness programs it is very important to have the proper warmup and cool down methods. Prior to any workout you must start your program with a dynamic warmup. This include some light cardiovascular activity for 5-6 minutes, shoulder pumps, form running, or light jump rope. The dynamic warmup is preparing your muscles for the given activity. Most people do not stretch properly and their athletic performance suffers. This activity is often skipped and is probably the number 1 reason for the onset if soreness. We are often short on time and skip the cool down. The cool down consists of stretching the muscles staticly. These stretches are the most common taught exercises where we hold the stretch for a minimal of 30 seconds. This is very important to reset the muscles for proper healing.
2. Therapeutic Restoration: This a wide range of activities. Some of activities include massage, ice baths, hot showers, acupressure, and ultrasound. Many top level athletes nationally or olympic level train multiple times per day. It is not uncommon for these athletes to have multiple massages and ice bathes per day.
3. Low intensity activity. I highly recommend this! The biggest mistake after a training session is become inactive. I have found many people actually have soreness lasting longer by doing no activity at all. Low intensity activity after an intense training session could include light walking, cycling, or your favorite group fitness class. Surprisingly active recovery is also very important. I personally found from an intense squatting session that doing squats the following day helped speed up my recovery. I would use 30% of the weight that I used the prior day. The military performs pushups 5 days per week in boot camp. The body will adapt and the soreness does go away.
4. Your sleep. Yes sleep is our #1 recovery zone. Our body needs proper rest to heal our tissue and help our central nervous system regenerate. Think of sleep as recharging your battery!
5. Proper nutrition. Nutrition is over 90% importance! We have a window of opportunity for muscle recovery. Think of the window as our muscles are calling for help. Very important that you replenish your body with good quality protein and carbohydrates within 30 minutes after your workout.
6. Exercise opinion? The 24-72 hour recovery does have alot of debate. Many Eastern Bloc countries perform exercises daily. It is not uncommon for olympic athletes to perform squats, cleans, pullups several times per day and back to back days. The military does perform pushups, running and pullups 5x per week back to back days. Studies show that the athletes performance improves. Many top level scientists believe the recovery theory was developed by the body building community.
So with that in mind…I think that all exercise programs should be individualized to your needs. There is no cookie cutter program for everybody. In our N-10sive Boot Camps you will find many of our participants coming to boot camp 2x per day or even back to back days! I have found these results in 30 days to be astonishing!
Train smart and expect success!
Steve
Comments on this entry are closed.