Anyone who has worked out or exercised has felt muscle soreness before, but what exactly is it? What is it that causes you to feel that soreness and discomfort 12-72 hours after your workout? Well lets start with some basic information, when you workout or exercise you are breaking down/tearing microscopic muscle fibers. The amount of tearing depends on how long and hard you workout, obviously the more you workout the more tearing that is most likely going to occur. After these muscle fibers are broken down they rebuild and doing this over and over is how your muscles grow and become bigger, this is called muscle hypertrophy.

Muscle soreness that is experienced after lifting weights and exercise is called Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness or DOMS. Now the pain that you feel 12-72 hours after you exercise is thought to be the result of your muscle fibers tearing, this tearing causes you pain but not right away, and that is supposedly the cause of DOMS. But that wasn’t always the popular answer for muscle soreness. Many believe the soreness experience after a workout is from a lactic acid build up in the muscles. Well it is true that lactic acid does cause the burning in your muscles that causes you to not lift or do anymore reps, it is not responsible for DOMS. Lactic acid disperses pretty quickly after you exercise and since it disperses quickly it cannot be responsible for the soreness that you feel the next day or two after a work out. So don’t be fooled by the lactic acid build up theory.

Now depending on the type of exercise you do you can experience more intense soreness. The level of soreness you experience is all dependent on the type of contraction your muscle is doing during an exercise. When the muscle is shortening during contraction, which is the case usually when you are lifting weights, this is called concentric contractions. Concentric contractions will cause delayed on set muscle soreness but they aren’t the most severe. Eccentric contractions are the ones that cause the most muscle soreness, this is when your muscles forcefully contract as they lengthen. Examples of exercises that exhibit a eccentric contraction are running downhill, push ups, squatting, and climbing stairs.

There are some ways to help fight against muscle soreness or at least make it less severe. Massage has been linked to decreasing DOMS, ice baths are used by many athletes to decrease muscle soreness, yoga has been show to decrease muscle soreness and stretching, although no scientific evidence suggest stretching prevents muscle soreness many people claim it makes their muscles feel better.

The best way, I believe to prevent DOMS , is to listen to your body. Don’t over exercise or do more then your body can handle. After time you will be able to push yourself more and more, but if you find you’re doing too much and experience muscle soreness for days , then you may want to tone it down a notch! (And always contact a doctor if any pain feels out of the ordinary!)

Muscle soreness is normal and happens to all of us, but it’s important to know the basic facts and myths before undergoing a serious workout / diet plan. Hopefully you now know a bit more than before, and if not, feel free to continue self-educating yourself on the subject!