Reducing Muscle Soreness From Weight Training

DOMS: Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness. It can result from various training stimuli such as certain intense or long running sessions, but often we get this after weight lifting. Soreness after lifting weights can usually mean a few things:

1) You exercised beyond your body’s current abilities 

AND/OR 

2) You did not properly execute post-workout recovery.  

This is because strength training causes small tears in the muscle fibers. Those tears then repair and become stronger, healthier tissue. The micro-tears aren’t bad, but they are what we can target and manage to help reduce DOMS. There are two strategies, broken up by if you have extra training time or not.

IF YOU ARE TIME STARVED:

1) Make less micro-tears by reducing training load. 

This can mean either reducing the reps, or the weights, or a combination of both. The main styles of lifting that cause micro-tears are: Eccentric lifting (lifting in a lengthened fashion such as slowly lowering down in a deadlift), Time Under Tension (how long your muscles are being asked to carry a load), or Explosive (moving weight very rapidly).  

Reducing the amount of repetition or weight specifically being done in those styles of lifting will help reduce micro-tears. Find a range that produces either no soreness, or a small amount and then slowly progress your lifting from there.  

Additionally, try to avoid ever lifting or doing exercises that take you to failure.  You should always be completing the prescribed repetitions of each exercise successfully and not feeling stuck towards the end.  

2) Improve post-workout fueling.

Making sure you are getting enough protein+carbs as well as hydration post workout is a key to recovery. Protein and carbs are the essential aspects of repairing the tissues. At least 25g of protein is suitable for most individuals, but can be higher for others. We also want to be drinking an electrolyte beverage immediately following training, then continuing with water consistently the rest of the day. The repair process needs all three to function properly, so we want to provide a platform to do so. Hydration is doubly important if you are also adding foam rolling, as we want to help mobilize our body’s systems, and adequate hydration is key for that. Note that electrolytes, specifically appropriate amounts of sodium will enhance absorption and overall hydration status. 

You can also opt to wear compression gear for a few hours. The compression gear, along with consistent movement, can help the recovery process. When the muscles contract/relax, they help physically push the blood. Staying in one position (sitting) for too long won’t help the tissue repair correctly and the compression won’t have quite as much benefit. Remember, we are doing all of this to promote the nutrition and hydration to reach the micro-tears and help recover faster.

IF YOU ARE TIME RICH:

Help the micro-tears repair better through improving post-workout recovery.

We want to take a physical and nutritional approach to post-workout recovery. If you are nailing your post workout fueling and hydration, the next step is to add in more tissue specific work. That means either massages or self-myofascial release (aka foam rolling).

For foam rolling the same day of the session (post workout), you want to slowly roll over the worked muscles, spending a few minutes on each one. On the anterior side, you can choose a slow up and down pattern. You can utilize a shearing technique on the posterior side of the body to help the connective tissue as well. Our aim is to promote more blood flow to the area. If also stretching, stretch AFTER foam rolling and choose to stretch in different planes of motion than what your lifting was. Twist, turn, and move gently while ‘holding’ the stretch so as to not be stationary during the ‘holds’ because we want to provide good ‘hydration’ to the connective tissue while stretching.

In the days after the workout, If you feel a specific knot in the muscle, it can be due to the tissue repairing in a non-ideal way.  It generally works out naturally, but we can help by choosing a few different approaches: either long holds (2 min or so) of tension specifically on the spot, or pin and stretch techniques.  These are meant to help the tissue either ‘relax’ or ‘settle’ into position a bit more. 

Some athletes may choose Graston as a means to help ‘straighten’ the repaired fibers. Usually done by a professional it helps the connective tissue realign (like straightening a bowl of spaghetti).  

All of these should help you preemptively reduce DOMS after your next weight training session.  Remember, when you experience DOMS it is because you exercised beyond your body’s current abilities AND/OR you did not properly execute post-workout recovery. So if you go WAY too big in a weight training session, it’s unlikely that any amount of post workout recovery is going to outweigh the fact that you lifted too far beyond your body’s current abilities.  Also note that new stimulus (changing the style or types of lifting) can also create soreness, though after a few sessions of the same work, your body should start compensating, resulting in less soreness.