Tips for dealing with soreness after a good workout

Is your bacon achin’? Experiencing soreness after a healthy workout is normal. Here are a few ways to alleviate the discomfort.

1. Drink plenty of water
   Biological reactions occur naturally within your muscles all the time. These reactions break down sugars in your system to produce the energy your body needs, and consequently waste or toxins. When you use your muscles more, this all happens much faster, resulting in more toxins and your body might have a hard time keeping up with clearing the toxins away. The accumulation of waste in your muscles can cause soreness…usually associated with the immediate burn you feel when your muscles go into anaerobic respiration. Drink ample water to stay well-hydrated. It’ll help give your body the fluid it needs to wash away that waste. You wouldn’t wash your hands without water, would you?
2. Get a massage
   Pay, bribe, or exchange a massage from someone. Or, whine until a kind pal gives you one. You can also rub your out-of-reach sore muscles against door jams, corners, knobs, and other household protrusions grizzly-bear style. Massage chairs and hand-held massagers are great too. It all feels good when you’re sore. A good massage will stretch your muscles and move fluid out to reduce inflammation and swelling.
3. Light exercise and stretching
   The act of light stretching and exercise will loosen stiff muscles and will help the muscles to work out their soreness on their own. Caution: don’t overdo it. Your muscles need time to heal and should not be heavily taxed. Just do enough so that you can get your blood flowing to regain a little more mobility and flexibility.
4. Stay in the habit of exercise
   When you work out, particularly more than you’re used to, you develop tiny tears in your muscles which fill with water and become inflamed…hence the soreness a few days after a particularly challenging bout of exercise. Now, this isn’t all bad. This slight muscle damage will heal stronger than before, which offers protection for workouts to come.
5. Heat therapy
   Lay on a heating pad, soak in a hot tub or shower, or apply a hot compress. Heat is known for relaxing sore muscles. A word of caution, though, if you experienced a muscle strain during your workout, apply a cold compress instead of hot for about 20 minutes every four to six hours for the first few days. The cold will alleviate pain and reduce swelling and inflammation. After a few days of cold therapy on the strained muscle, switch to warm therapy to relax the muscles as you would after a normal workout.
6. Proper Sleep and nutrition
   After a workout your body is healing. Remember that this is the time when your body is actually getting stronger, not during the workout. It’s integral to give your body the tools it needs to not only heal, but heal stronger. Make sure you get healthy amounts of sleep for healing during these inactive periods. Also, make sure you get proper nutrition. Your body needs proteins and vitamins to rebuild tissue. After you worked so hard, you wouldn’t build your body back up with junk food, would you? Set yourself up for a quick recovery with optimal healing conditions.

Your delayed muscle ache can peak anywhere between 24 and 48 hours after exercise. So count on being sore for a couple days and try out these remedies to see if they work for you.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 at 10:04 pm and is filed under Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.