Should You Exercise When Your Muscles Are Sore?

With exercise programs like 30 Day Shred and P90X increasing in popularity, working out every day may seem like a safe idea. People new to working out or looking to maximize their time may hit the gym every day, thinking this will return the most gain. However, this is not always the case. Choosing when and how to exercise should include the following considerations.

Muscle Soreness

Those who push themselves hard, especially people new to exercise, will almost certainly experience delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) 1-3 days after exercising. A question arises: Should I still exercise when I'm sore? Knowing the answer requires understanding the process of muscle damage and repair caused by strength-building exercise.

When you work a muscle beyond its normal limits, the muscle fibers will suffer tiny tears. Within 1 to 3 days, these tears should heal. An important component of the body's healing process is inflammation; the immune system seeks to protect injured areas of the body by surrounding them with fluids that facilitate healing. Healing muscle fiber tears involves manufacturing new fibers. As damaged fibers are replaced, the muscle grows in size and strength.

Soreness is a result of the inflammatory response. As such, normal soreness is a sign that your body is still working to build muscle from your previous workout. You might imagine your muscles bulging in size as you perform your workout, but the workout is merely the situation that gives rise to the real building, which occurs later. If you proceed to work out sore muscles, you will interrupt the healing process by causing further damage (tears) that will require more inflammation and cause more pain. New fibers will not have time to grow and replace damaged ones.

Exercising muscles that are still sore from your previous workout not only predisposes you to injury but decreases the efficacy of your workout as well. When a muscle is sore, leave it alone.

Alternating Workouts

For some people, going to the gym or sticking to a workout plan almost every day is necessary to maintain motivation and discipline. It is possible to exercise safely every day if you alternate the workouts you do. For example, you can do lower body strength-building one day, upper body the next and cardio on the third day. This cycle allows almost 3 days between each type of workout. Depending on the intensity of your workout and your fitness level, you may need more or less recovery time.

Reducing Muscle Soreness

If you're really working your muscles, there's no way to completely prevent muscle soreness. There are steps you can take to manage it, though.

One of the best ways to shorten recovery time is to ensure your muscles are getting the nutrients they need to repair themselves. All nutrients are important, but protein is especially relevant to muscle rebuilding. Try to eat a protein-rich snack within 20 minutes after your workout. Also stay well hydrated to ensure that nutrients reach your muscles.

Encouraging blood circulation to sore muscles will help flush out painful inflammation. Though inflammation encourages healing to an extent, the body often goes overboard with it. Gentle stretching and massage are ways to keep the blood flowing. Some people choose the active recovery approach over complete rest in order to promote circulation. Active recovery entails doing very low-intensity activity to relieve soreness. If you're sore from running, walking could be your active recovery exercise. If your arms and chest are sore from heavy weightlifting, doing a small amount of body weight exercise like pushups would be a good choice. The key is to make sure the recovery exercise you're doing is significantly lower in intensity than the exercise that caused soreness.

Exercising when your muscles are still sore from your last session can lead to injury and prevent muscle growth. Protecting yourself from injury will enable you to meet and maintain your fitness goals.


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