What To Do About Poor, Sore Muscles

Muscle soreness may be the leading cause of overtraining and being uncomfortable for a few days after training. And continual cellular damage over and over to the point where the body cannot recover can result in overtraining.

Before training, try leg elevations.  Since many of us stand or sit for long periods of time before going to the gym and training, overall circulation is less than ideal. Instead, 20-30 minutes before you train, lay down with your feel against a wall or other object and get the blood back to your upper body and heart.  You'll improve your circulation especially when you train legs or your lower back.  After your workout, your body is in a prime time to devour nutrients. This is an ideal time to give it the protein it needs with the carbohydrates for energy recovery.  You see, if muscle soreness is caused by micro trauma resulting in cellular damage then obviously you want to give your body plenty of materials quickly to repair itself.  Proper post workout nutrition can reduce the amount of soreness you can experience.  Other ways to keep sore muscles at bay include massage, sauna, whirlpool, chiropractic adjustments, acupressure and others are among the more popular therapeutic modalities.   Also, don't forget sleep.  Remember that this is the time your body repairs all that micro trauma so if you aren't getting enough quality sleep, it can affect your overall recovery and body's ability to repair itself. That can lead to prolonged muscle soreness. The amount of sleep each person needs will vary.

Muscle soreness is uncomfortable but using any or all of the above recovery methods you can significantly reduce the duration of muscle soreness.  Things not to try: aspirin-it may inhibit protein synthesis in the body.  Alcohol.  For obvious reasons.  And if the pain just does not seem to be going away, get to a doctor for a check up.  It may be something else.