We’ve all exeperienced it right? You think to yourself, yesss I’m going to get back into working out… So you do and you go hard because you want to make that effort and you want to see that difference - fast!

Next day you feel fine. Then when you collapse into bed, you start feeling a bit of a twinge in a couple of muscles. It sort of feels good because you realise you’ve used your muscles a bit for a change. However, you get up the next morning, and ohhhh the pain! You heave yourself out of bed and every step makes you wince. Well I’m experiencing it right now. I had a workout not yesterday but the day before and I’m feelin’ it! Its not terrible, but I’m aware that it has been a little too long since I had a workout!

Why are my muscles soo sore? Because I haven’t used them in a while and actually it has a name. Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness… or DOMS for short.

DOMS attacks around 24 or more hours after a workout. Basically its a whole heap of tiny little tears in the muscle tissues thats cause by something called eccentric contraction. Eccentric contraction is when the muscle stretches under pressure of something greater than the muscle can generate - so for example, lifting a heavy weight, or running downhill. Or working out after a long time of not.

So… when sore, should you keep working out? Well, I would say yes. Why? Well, often the soreness takes a long time to go away. And then you have to start all over again so its a never ending cycle. So, seeing as you’ll be sore anyway, why don’t you keep working out? In actual fact, I’ve found that if I continue working out through the pain (which really isn’t pain, its merely discomfort, depending on how you look at it!), the length of time for soreness is actually reduced. I think I wrote about this in an earlier article. But keep working out! Don’t take 2 steps forward and then 2 back. You’ll never get anywhere. Work through it because I find it sort of massages your muscles. It doesn’t make them more sore - it sort of eases it. And I don’t think it will damage the muscle.

I find it quite comforting when my muscles hurt because it shows I still have them somewhere!

Tags: discomfort, DOMS, sore muscles

Filed under: Articles, Exercises, Fitness, Mckenna, Motivation, Training