Why You’re Sore After a Workout

When you work out, you’re essentially stressing your muscles, which actually causes tiny tears in your muscle fibers.  This is normal.  As soon as you’re done stressing your muscles, your body quickly responds to repair those tears.  Each time the tears are repaired, it lays down more muscle fibers making your muscles bigger and stronger.

The soreness you experience largely depends on the amount of stress you put on your muscles.  How much soreness you experience depends on several factors:

• Your fitness level - the less fit for you are, the more soreness you’ll experience.

• Your familiarity with the workout - if the workout involves exercises and activities you’re not used to doing, the more sore you’ll be the next day.

• The amount of effort you put into the workout - the more you push yourself during the workout the more likely you’ll feel sore the next day.

For the most part, no matter how severe your soreness feels, your body has the capability to repair your muscles and recover fully.  However, there are a few things that you can do to help speed up the healing and repairing process, so that you can overcome your soreness more quickly.

How to Overcome Muscle Soreness Faster

Here is a list of supplements, foods and exercises that’ll help reduce or eliminate muscle soreness after a workout:

1. Consume more brightly colored fruits and vegetables.  These produce contain lots of antioxidants which help prevent muscle damage.  The brighter the color the better, because these fruits and vegetables have the highest content of antioxidants.  Exercise produces waste and increases free radical activity, which can cause cell damage.  Antioxidants work effectively to clean up the waste and fight off the free radicals, to prevent any long-term damage from occurring in your body.  Note: The one fruit that’s been shown to effectively help reduce soreness is tart cherries.

2. Drinking a post workout protein shake is an effective way to reduce muscle soreness as well.  Regardless of your fitness level, if you’re exercising, you need to make sure that you are consuming enough proteins.  Proteins provide amino acids to your body, which are the building blocks needed to repair and rebuild muscle fibers that have been damaged during the workout.  How much protein you need to consume after a workout varies with each individual, but usually 15 - 30 g of protein is recommended.  Keep in mind that for most people, your body can’t process more than 30 g of protein at one time.  The most bioavailable protein supplement is whey protein.  Bioavailability simply means it’s easily absorbed and assimilated by your body.  If you don’t eat dairy, you can also use egg protein or plant protein as well.

3. Caffeine is well known to help increase your energy and boost your strength during your workout, but it’s also been shown to help decrease sore muscle after the workout.  Doctors are still trying to understand exactly how, but clinical studies show that participants who use caffeine have a faster recovery time after an intense workout.  The hypothesis is that caffeine blocks the central nervous receptors that are linked to pain in the body.  Either way, it you’re not adversely affected by caffeine, consuming a small dose before and after a workout may be helpful in not only boosting the quality of your workouts, but also allowing better recovery as well.

4. Self myofascial release (foam rolling).  It’s a technical word for self massage.  If you have access to a foam roller, hand held massage roller or even a PVC pipe, you can roll your sore muscles to help alleviate muscle soreness.  It’s important to not just roll up and down the muscles, but to actually find the “hot spot” and hold it for 20 seconds before your roll off the area.  The exact mechanism isn’t known, but one theory is that the compressive pressure put onto the sore area produces a temporary ischemic compression (stops the blood from flowing into the area) and when you roll off the area, it causes a rush of blood to flow into the area which helps accelerate the muscle repairing process.

5. Branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) reduce the breakdown of muscle because they increase the protein synthesis within the body.  When you’re using BCAA supplement, it can help to conserve muscle tissue and prevent soreness, especially with intense training routines.  In particular the amino acids leucine, isoleucine and valine have been shown to greatly help with muscle repair.  They’ve also been shown to help reduce cortisol, which is a catabolic hormone that breaks down muscle tissues.  It’s recommended that you take BCAA on a regular basis to allow enough BCAA in your body to be present, so that it can help conserve muscle tissue as you train.  The recommended dosage is 5 - 10 g per dose taken 3 - 4 times a day.  Once in the morning, before and after a workout, and again in the evening.