MUSCLE RECOVERY GUIDE - Sore Muscle Tips

How to Recover Faster

We don’t grow muscle in the gym. We expose it to stress in the gym and then build muscle outside the gym with proper nutrition, rest, and recovery. That being said, the most significant muscle you can grow and develop is your mind, so let’s get some useful information your way.

Even though adequate rest and recovery is common sense advice and many studies have been done on why it’s so essential for health and fitness, most people don’t give enough attention to recovery, and very few have a recovery strategy. Skimping on rest is something many people think they can get away with until they become too depleted or injured to continue.

This section will help you manage your rest and recovery. I’ve taken a vast amount of scientific research, poured over the countless science journals, pulled out the most crucial information, and turned it into a list of practical action strategies. All you have to do is read it and start working on making these real habits in your own life.

Feel free to tackle one technique at a time. Many psychologists believe this the most successful way to approach a habit formation process. Look at the list of successful sleep and recovery recommendations, and address what you know needs the most work or which you feel is holding your recovery back the most.

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Lifestyle Tips

Minimising Muscle Soreness and Recovering Quicker After your Workouts.

You just crushed an excellent intense workout. You pushed yourself hard in the gym and smashed through some new personal records. You feel great — until you wake up the next morning, barely able to move. So what’s going on? Should we be concerned about it?

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS)

Enter delayed onset muscle soreness, better known as DOMS. It’s an acronym that athletes and fitness buffs wear with pride. DOMS is caused by intense exercise, especially resistance training such as weight lifting. The DOMS response is similar to an acute inflammatory response to infection. Once the body perceives the muscle damage from a workout, immune cells (like neutrophils and macrophages) converge on the damaged tissue, removing cellular debris and helping to maintain the fibre’s ultrastructure. The body then produces signalling molecules (called cytokines) that activate the release of growth factors involved in muscle development. In this roundabout way, localized inflammation – a source of DOMS – leads to a growth response that in effect, strengthens the ability of muscle tissue to withstand future muscle damage. Adaptation! From all this, we see that DOMS can be a good thing because a certain amount of soreness may indirectly benefit muscle development. The actual pain felt as DOMS may not be the muscle fiber damage itself, it may be the edema, swelling and inflammation.

The eccentric part of a resistance exercise (where you lower the weight and the muscle lengthens) has been linked to greater DOMS compared to concentric movements and isometric contractions. Also, muscles performing eccentric actions rely more on type II muscle fibers and type II muscle fibers are more susceptible to damage than type I muscles fibers during eccentric actions.

Beginners - Important Note!

Beginners should be aware of DOMS before they start training, otherwise, it can be quite a surprise – sometimes unpleasant – and they don’t know what to think when it happens. They’re not sure if they’re injured and sometimes even quit, while protesting, “If this is what working out does to you, forget this whole exercise thing!”

If you’re a beginner and you feel this soreness, remember it’s perfectly normal and doesn’t mean you did anything wrong at all. You probably just had an excellent workout!

Is DOMS Good or Bad?

At first, the idea that you’re damaging your muscles by weight training and intense exercise doesn’t sound like a good thing at all. However, breaking down or damaging the muscle structures is a part of the body’s adaption process to cause muscle growth and strength-building. You break it down and rebuild it, bigger and stronger than before. Feeling soreness after the workout may be an indicator of that breaking down and rebuilding process.

DOMS is for Life – Get Used to It

Soreness is usually most severe for beginners, but you will probably experience soreness your entire training lifetime, each time you start a new workout program. As your body gets accustomed to one particular workout, the degree of soreness subsides. Whether that’s within a couple of workouts or a couple of weeks, eventually the same workout may no longer get you sore at all (unless you’re intentionally finding ways to introduce new muscular stresses every workout).

In a “twisted” kind of way, we serious trainers not only don’t mind a little soreness, we kind of like it! It gives us some very immediate feedback that we did something, probably good, and being able to “feel” your muscles in between workouts, I could argue, has some psychological benefits too.

Overall, I personally believe that a moderate amount of DOMS – a soreness in the muscles you last worked that’s noticeable but not debilitating in any way, correlates with a good workout and correlates with muscle growth, provided all the supporting factors are in place for muscle growth to occur. Those include recovery, adequate caloric intake (surplus), adequate protein, the right hormonal environment and so on.

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“I used to feel sore but now I don’t any more. Should I change things up?”

As your body adapts to workouts, people believe they should change their workouts regularly to keep re-stimulating or “shocking” your body. So when they switch to a new exercise program, lo and behold, they get sore again, and this correlation appears to prove that theory about training adaptation.

It’s then natural to assume that if you’re not feeling sore anymore, it means your workouts are no longer sufficient. Some people say they never get sore and wonder if they’re doing something wrong. Others are always excruciatingly sore, and they too wonder if they’re doing something wrong.

“Getting sore from workouts isn’t the goal. Getting RESULTS is!”

If you’re making progress on your workout (strength increasing), your workout is working. If you’re one of those individuals who never seem to get sore, the same principle applies. Don’t use muscle soreness as your sole indicator of workout effectiveness. The sign of effective workouts is whether you made visible and measurable improvements in muscle growth and strength. Was your workout effective? You tell me – did you gain muscle or strength? Do you look better? If so, your workout was effective, whether you were sore or not.

DOMS is more like a side effect of a strenuous workout. With that said, I do believe DOMS does correlate – fairly reliably – with “good” sessions, and lack of DOMs may be an indication to push yourself a little harder in the next workout to get those results a little faster.

Caution! - Good vs Bad Soreness

Extreme soreness can prevent you from effectively completing your next workout, and if that happens, it’s not a good thing. If you can’t walk up or down the stairs after leg day or comb your hair after upper body day, you’ve pushed too far, possibly beyond your body’s ability to repair the damaged muscle, and that means no muscle growth.

DOMS usually begins as early as 8 to 12 hours after training, increases for 24 to 48 hours, and peaks 48 to 72 hours afterward, then begins to subside. But studies show that in some individuals, it can last 8 to 10 days! Depending on the severity, eccentric muscle strength can decrease during this period.

Some people seem especially prone to excessive muscle soreness (part of your body type/genetics), and there have been cases studied where recovery was not complete for 26 days. In the most extreme scenarios, three percent of individuals may suffer from rhabdomyolysis after an extraordinarily strenuous exercise bout. Rhabdomyolysis is a degeneration of the muscle cells, producing myalgia, muscle tenderness, weakness, swelling, and dark-colored urine. In addition to the pain, this causes a loss in the muscle’s ability to produce force.

“98 percent of orthopedic injuries are preventable.” – Kelly Starrett, physical therapist.

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Maximising Your Mobility!

Without trying, we put our bodies to the test every day. We lift heavy things, sometimes with incredibly poor posture. We hunch over TVs and computers all day, sit for hours on end, and spend plenty of time hover over our smartphones. After a while, the body starts adapting to these new “normal” conditions, even if they’re not the greatest. These adverse effects of sitting are slowly killing you, even if you exercise regularly! Our bodies take a pretty intense beating. So what can we do about it?

Let’s look at a Grapefruit

Your muscle is similar to this grapefruit. Your muscles are made up of a spiderweb of fibers that weave through every part of the body that “glues” everything together (just like the layers and tiny packets of juice and pulp shown here). This “webbing” is called fascia.

In a healthy body, the fascia allows the muscles to move freely. However, when there’s any trauma or damage, the fascia becomes tight and inflamed to the point that there’s tension in the body, and muscle movement is restricted.

“Fascial restrictions can exert excessive pressure causing all kinds of symptoms producing pain, headaches, or restriction of motion. Fascial restrictions affect our flexibility and stability and are a determining factor in our ability to withstand stress and perform daily activities.” – Myofascial Release Treatment Center.

For most people, injury to the body musculature can happen without even knowing it. Something as simple as sitting hunched over for too long can force the body to adapt to positions that it isn’t designed to support, which puts stress on the muscular system.

Over time, the fascia begins to build up more tension and pressure to the point that there are restricted movement and strain on the body. Evidence of the damaged fascia varies based on the location of the injury and extent of the damage. However, the damage can have broad-ranging effects if not treated.

One of the most common areas of “trauma” is in the hip, due to the regular use of the hip flexor from sitting too much. Because of their frequent use, the muscles can become extremely tight over time. With the increased tension, the flexor begins to pull the hips forward, putting abnormal pressure on the lower back.

Benefits from Regular Sessions of Mobility Work

Increases blood flow to the muscles.
Lengthens and elongates muscles.
Drastic increases in muscle flexibility and function.
Repairs tight and fatigued muscles.
Improves joint mobility and range of motion
Reduces stress on muscles and joints.
Improves posture and daily movement.
Speeds up workout recovery time.
Improves quality of life!

Swap Static for Dynamic Warm Ups

New research suggests proper old-fashioned stretching isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Instead, dynamic mobility is the real key to unlocking our bodies’ true potential, bringing us closer to peak performance.

In the Workout Section, you’ll see more on how to complete a proper dynamic warm-up. By completing moves that mimic those you’ll be doing in your routine, the body will be adequately prepared for whatever workout, practice, or game lies ahead. These movements will elevate the heart rate while warming the muscles and getting your joints moving effectively.

Roll out the Knots

You can roll away muscle soreness and speed recovery with the lacrosse balls and foam rollers. This type of self-induced deep tissue massage is known as “self-myofascial release.” Admittedly, it can be a bit torturous at first, but gritting it out can do wonders for tight muscles by breaking up scar tissue and improving circulation.

Self-myofascial release is soft muscle tissue therapy that you can do yourself, like having a masseuse (you!) within the comfort of your own home, and usually only takes 10-15 minutes.

Using a foam roller or other mobility tools, you can place pressure on “trigger points” or troublesome areas that help break up knots in muscles and over time, helps restore the tissue to its proper function.

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Fix Your Posture

As you spend time trying to repair your body, make sure you don’t put it right back in the situation you were trying to get out of! Focus on building positive posture habits, especially when you’re working at the computer or staring down at your phone. It may feel incredibly unnatural at first, but the more you do it, the faster your body will be able to “re-adapt.”

Get out the Chair

Humans are not meant to be sedentary creatures, but modern televisions, computers, and automobiles have forced people to spend far longer sitting down than standing up. Excessive sitting has severe consequences for the weight of individuals, the posture of many people, and, ultimately, the lifespan.

Minutes Sitting / Day

% Calories Burned Above Sitting

Standing 10%

Walking 150%

Uphill Walking / Stairs 220%

Recommendations...

Reduce optional sitting time. (Bus/train/meetings/social events)
For every 30 minutes of sitting, go for a 5 minute walk.
Exercise for at least 30 minutes daily.
Aim to complete at least 10,000 steps per day.
Use an activity tracker for improved mindfulness and motivation.
Use stand up desks.
If you are sitting, incline your chair to 135˚.

“Give time for your health and fitness, and it will give you time for your life.”

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Recovery from Training

For optimal performance, muscle growth, strength, and definition, you’ve got to work hard in the gym, pushing yourself with intensity and progression. However, trying to endlessly increase training intensity with higher weights, more reps, more sets, and less rest could be detrimental to your performance and your goals.

Hours of time and effort spent in the gym must be followed by sufficient rest and recovery to ensure optimal results. While you rest after an intense workout, your hormones, muscles, and the central nervous system adapt and develop to new levels to compensate for the stress that you’ve applied. These adoptions allow you to perform with more strength, power, and endurance.

If, however, you don’t allow for proper recovery, the body will store less glycogen, and your muscles will appear to flatten out, performance will decline, strength will fall, and your risk of injury increases.

Overtraining – Is Real or a Myth?

Overtraining is a genuine phenomenon, but the only athletes I’ve ever seen overtrained have been high-level Olympians who train more than 20 hours per week for years at a time. Once overtraining occurs, it can take 8-12 months to recover.

For most people, overtraining will probably not be the issue, and that the actual route cause of the problem is under-recovery.

Under Recovery – “A mental and/or physical state where an individuals’s capacity and ability to recover is occurring at an insufficient rate to offset the stress being imposed by training (weight training and/or cardio).”

Check out this research study below, and you’ll see that if you recover properly, you can handle a whole lot of training!

In July 2012, researchers in Norway (Raastad T., Kirketeig, A., Wolf, D., Paulsen G) presented their findings at the 17th annual conference of the ECSS. They took elite strength athletes who were training squats, deadlifts, and bench press, where their total training volume of 3 training sessions was divided further into six sessions per week. Shockingly, the researchers found that their subjects’ strength and hypertrophy skyrocketed! Powerlifters improved strength and muscular adaptations to a greater extent when equal

When you train a muscle hard, it will require 24 – 72 hours to recover fully, depending on your experience level, volume, and intensity of training. The ability of individual muscle fibers to recover is not all that limiting when it comes to recovery. For instance, a marathon runner can go out and routinely run 10 miles every day, competitive swimmers regularly swim two or more hours per day, and fitness models often perform 45 minutes of cardio up to 6 days per week. When you think about it, that’s loads of volume on individual muscles.

So how can people do cardio every day without any problems, but if they do just 30 reps of heavyweight training on a given body-part, it can take a week to recover fully? One of the main reasons is that intense exercise, like weight lifting, actively involves the central nervous system (CNS).

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The Central Nervous System

The central nervous system controls your muscles. When you want to contract a muscle, a message goes down your brain and spinal cord, where it eventually connects to the individual muscle motor units through something called a neuromuscular junction. The muscle receives your message telling it to contract, generate tension. You can think of your central nervous system as a primary power plant of energy signals.

Many different types of stress can impact the recovery of your central nervous system (including undersleeping, anxiety, poor diet, smoking, air pollution, partying, and stimulant usage). When the central nervous system is fatigued, the strength and functionality of all major muscle groups will be negatively affected. Not only will you tend to feel a bit run down, but the control, function, and strength of your muscles become compromised. That’s why you can do a hardcore leg workout today, come in the gym tomorrow, and find that the power on your bench press is negatively affected. The fatigue in your bench press doesn’t come from muscular fatigue but through neural fatigue.

The reason cardio and other low-intensity activities can be performed every day, even with significant muscular involvement, is because these activities don’t create much drain on your CNS. On the other hand, high-intensity cardio, sprints, and weight training can impact the nervous system, and thus tend to require more recovery time.

Stress also lowers the immune system’s ability to fight off physical illness, which explains why the common cold takes hold during difficult times. The weakened immune system does not have the strength to fight off infections.

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The Role of Cortisol

When people are exposed to stress, as mentioned previously, the adrenal glands will respond by producing adrenaline. With prolonged stress, the body will react by producing a different hormone called cortisol, which is regulated by the hypothalamus in the brain. This physical reaction comes about because of the desire to maintain that sense of balance. When exposed to chronic stress, the physical body will react by releasing cortisol in preparation for the fight or flight situation. Cortisol effectively mobilizes your body on every functioning level to ensure it has sufficient incentive to survive the danger.

When someone has chronic stress, cortisol provides:

Immediate energy and strength to endure.
Desensitization to pain.
Improvement in memory function.

The problem is when cortisol remains in your blood circulation for a prolonged period, where it can cause health issues such as blood clots, angina, and heart disease.

Effects of Excess Cortisol and Under Recovery

Slows down digestion, leading to weight gain.
Increases the blood sugar level, which is a direct link to Diabetes.
Reduces inflammatory response.
Increases blood pressure.
Depresses the immune system.
Reduced growth hormone (GH) release.
Reduced protein synthesis.
Increased protein breakdown.
Disrupted sleep patterns.
Increased cravings for carbohydrates.
Fatigue and exhaustion.
Decreased serotonin levels which can trigger and amplify depression.

An intense workout that lasts too long (over 60 – 90 minutes) will lead to cortisol production designed to limit performance output to reduce stress and allow for muscular and functional repair. As a result, you experience reduced testosterone production, inhibiting protein synthesis, accelerating proteolysis (protein breakdown), and inhibiting muscular growth. Not good! What’s worse is it also reduces the body’s ability to use fat as an energy source, increasing the amount of stored fat within the body. It’s clear then that excessive cortisol from excessive training or compromised recovery is something we want to avoid.

Recommendations for Recovery

People can consciously or unconsciously choose to live a stressful life. The good news is that we can mitigate the adverse effects by putting a higher priority on our recovery, health, and wellbeing.

Manage your Training: If you are already training at a high intensity and volume, consider backing off for a while if your performance is starting to suffer. Give each muscle group 48 – 72 hours recovery before training again.

Get Some Relaxation: Find ways to reduce mental and physical stress. Listen to music, go for a walk, practice relaxation techniques, or find someone to talk to about anxiety.

Get Organised: Studies show that being organized reduces anxiety levels and cortisol. Take the time to plan your day.

Active Recovery: Gentle activity, like walking, promotes blood flow around the body, provides nutrients to muscles, and clears away waste build-up such as CO2 and lactic acid. People become less physically active with age, and those over the age of 55 may benefit the most from this. A walk also boosts the immune system by reducing anxiety and assists in restoring the antioxidants that protect from disease.

Get Adequate Sleep: Sometimes, sleep is the best medicine, especially when recovering from a workout or fighting off a cold or flu. Develop a routine to prepare yourself to calm down for a restful night’s sleep. This “wind-down” time should be at least one hour.

Get Yourself Clean: Wash your hands and stay hygienic and reduce exposure to germs. Use soap and water and wash vigorously for 15 to 20 seconds.

Get Healthy Nutrition: Nutrient deficiencies from poor nutrition can impair your ability to fight off infection. Excess fats can also weaken the immune system because they confuse white blood cells and reduce the recognition of disease. This fix is straightforward; eat more fruits, vegetables, oats, grains, legumes, nuts, berries, and mushrooms. If fast food is a must, choose healthy fast food menu items. Pay attention to calorie intake. Consume less fat and more antioxidants. Antioxidants restore decaying organ cells and assist with stability by slowing down the oxidation process, thereby preventing common diseases.

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Muscle Recovery

"Recover Faster and Have More Energy than Ever Before."

How to Recover Faster

Minimising Muscle Soreness and Recovering Quicker After your Workouts.

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS)

Beginners - Important Note!

Is DOMS Good or Bad?

DOMS is for Life – Get Used to It

“I used to feel sore but now I don’t any more. Should I change things up?”

“Getting sore from workouts isn’t the goal. Getting RESULTS is!”

Caution! - Good vs Bad Soreness

Let’s look at a Grapefruit

Swap Static for Dynamic Warm Ups

Roll out the Knots

Fix Your Posture

Get out the Chair

Minutes Sitting / Day

% Calories Burned Above Sitting

Overtraining – Is Real or a Myth?

The Central Nervous System

The Role of Cortisol

Recommendations for Recovery