How much soreness is too much

If your post-workout soreness keeps you from continuing to work out or pursue everyday activities, it's a big, flashing signal that you need to either dial back your workout intensity, double-check your workout form, change some lifestyle factors that affect your exercise recovery or perhaps all of the above. In certain cases, you might even need immediate medical intervention. If your soreness lingers more than a few days or is extreme to the point of debilitation, it's a signal that something is wrong.

You need to adjust your workouts, change some related lifestyle factors or maybe even seek medical attention. Soreness that doesn't improve within this time period is a signal that something is off. Although the mechanism behind DOMS isn't entirely understood, it's believed to be caused by microscopic tears in your muscle fibers. To a certain degree, this is a natural part of working out, and your body actually gets stronger during the post-workout rebuilding and recovery process — not during the workout itself.

But don't mistake DOMS for a badge of honor; although you can be justifiably proud of the effort that goes into a tough workout, you don't have to push yourself to the point of debilitating soreness to reap the benefits of strength training or other exercises.

While any workout can cause DOMS if it's intense enough or simply new enough that your body hasn't had a chance to adapt, eccentric movements are likely to leave you more sore. These are workouts where your muscles lengthen under load or, to put it another way, lengthen as you resist gravity. Examples of eccentric movements include running downhill, lowering the dumbbell from a biceps curl or lowering the weight stack on a leg press machine. Rhabdomyolysis typically occurs after extreme exercise, which is why, for a time, it was publicized largely in connection with CrossFit workouts and sports teams, both of which are focused on pushing athletes to the extremes of their ability.

But other factors , including physical trauma, working out in extreme heat and use of drugs, such as cocaine, heroin and amphetamines, can also cause it. What if your post-workout soreness doesn't feel like DOMS or rhabdomyolysis? The difference between the two depends on what's injured: A muscle strain is an injury to your muscles or the tendons that connect them to bone, while a joint sprain is an injury to the ligaments that connect and stabilize your bones at the joints.

Vazquez recommends always including a proper warm-up including dynamic stretching , and cool-down period as part of your routine. Photo by Dinielle De Veyra from Pexels. A sports massage is one good way to reduce the effects. A study in the Journal of Exercise Rehabilitation found a massage to be beneficial on both gait and feelings of post-workout soreness.

Other common ways to treat DOMS include foam rolling, contrast showers alternating between hot and cold water , Epsom salt baths, increased protein intake to increase protein synthesis , omega-3 supplementation to reduce inflammation and sleep. Regardless of your preferred Rx, Haythe recommends looking at your diet to make sure your taking in nutrients to help your body heal.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels. There may be times when you overdo it with your workout and feel bad. Really bad. But when should you be concerned?

ACSM advises that if the pain becomes debilitating, you experience heavy swelling in your limbs or your urine becomes dark in color, you should see your doctor. DOMS usually begins within hours after a new activity or a change in activity, and can last up to hours after the exercise. The muscle pain is due to inflammation within the muscle, which is one of the main triggers for this muscle soreness. You are most likely to experience delayed muscle soreness after one of the following:.

All people are at risk for muscle soreness, even body builders and other professional athletes. During exercise, you stress your muscles and the fibers begin to break down. As the fibers repair themselves, they become larger and stronger than they were before. Beginners and elite lifters tend to feel it most often because of the shock of the novelty and weight of their programming, respectively. There are two different kinds: acute and delayed-onset. While different, both are generally caused by this sort of inflammation.

Lucky and vigilant lifters might only feel sore once in a while; beginners will have to overcome serious bouts of it as their bodies adjust to volume and weight. Lifters who want to eliminate muscle soreness can gameplan it like they might against former Raptor Kawhi Leonard, aiming more for containment than total defeat. The old explanation placed lactic acid buildup , which occurs when muscles overexert themselves anaerobically, as its cause. Early scholarship posited that the acid which built up in muscles after tough workouts remained, made them ache, and functioned as a signal for the body to rest.

But soreness is still not definitively understood. Current science paints muscle soreness as a complicated set of inputs, dancing together. Eccentric exercise movements and lifting serious weight have been shown to cause soreness, by stretching muscles, and placing them under load, respectively. About the two types : acute soreness is the immediate kind, which we feel when we start a new program or lift after a layoff.

It occurs right away and is caused by muscle fatigue or a lactic acid buildup. Acute soreness can also pop up in newly activated muscles over the course of a lifting program.

A lifter fixing their posterior chain — waking up their dead glutes and hamstrings with good mornings and glute bridges — may be sore right away after an exercise as those body parts wake up, take on more of a load, and get stressed.

Acute soreness can come and go right away, or last for several hours.