There is a reason that the body feels pain. Pain is our body’s way of telling us that something is wrong or that we’re in danger of something being wrong. We feel pain after a workout because we’ve done damage to our muscles. The muscle damage is necessary to build muscle strength because when torn muscle fibers repair themselves they are stronger than before. The repair job also burns more calories, that is part of the reason strength training helps in not only muscle building, but also in weight loss.
You may experience your muscle soreness after the workout in delayed form of stiffness that comes the following day. The stiffness may make a workout that day uncomfortable, but you can stretch and workout through the stiffness. Stretching is important because if the muscles are really stiff, working out cold could actually make the pain worse. Remember, pain is our barometer – it tells us when we are overdoing it – if stretching doesn’t relieve some of the stiffness then it may be a good time to take a little rest.
Warming up and cooling down are important to help you avoid soreness. Low impact aerobics and muscle training are both vital to your overall fitness, but warming your muscles up before a workout and cooling them down sufficiently in order to help maximize not only the workout, but how good you feel after the workout. If you are very sore, a mild workout can actually increase blood flow into the sore areas and help the muscle fibers to heal faster.
One of the best ways to work out with muscle soreness is to work alternating muscle groups every other day. This gives your muscles between 2 and 4 days to make the repairs and low impact or cardiovascular activity can be performed on off muscle training days to keep the blood flowing to the affected areas.
We need to feel pain. Pain helps us to monitor our progress and alerts us to grave injuries. We need pain and we need to understand what the messages are that it is giving us. So the next time you feel sore after a workout, remember – you need that pain.
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