How To Deal With Muscle Soreness The Right Way

Recently updated on October 25th, 2022 at 11:16 am

Whether you’ve finally downloaded this running app or you’re a professional athlete, one way or another, you’ll have to deal with muscle soreness. 

Sore or strained muscles go hand in hand with working out. It’s your body’s natural way of signaling that the muscles need to grow so that they can deal with the added strain and work. 

However, if you don’t deal with muscle soreness the right way, it might linger and cause longer periods of inflammation. Worst case scenario, if you don’t prepare your muscles properly, the muscle ligaments might tear.

Keep on reading for our full breakdown on how to treat your muscle soreness gently and in the shortest time period possible. 

Muscle Soreness: Understanding the Different Types

Let’s start with the basics. 

There are two kinds of muscle soreness you need to keep in mind. After an exercise, you’re likely to feel two kinds of muscular soreness. It’s either acute muscle soreness or delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS).

First, we have acute muscle soreness. It happens shortly after exercise and is often characterized as a burning feeling. It’s the sensation you get when you slightly overextend your muscles. This is produced by lactic acid accumulation in the muscles, but it disappears nearly as soon as it appears.

On the other hand, DOMS causes muscle soreness and stiffness around 24 to 72 hours after intense activity, particularly when doing activities that you aren’t accustomed to. 

Tiny rips in your muscle fibers and tendons, and ligaments create DOMS. But don’t be frightened; these rips are perfectly natural and help your muscles recover stronger than before.

How to Deal With Sore Muscles

There’s always taking the best shortcut and getting a specialized percussion massager from sourcefitness.net. However, if you’d rather take the longer methods, that’s also an option. 

Let’s explore those ways one at a time. 

1. Anti-Inflammatory Supplements and Foods

Anti-inflammatory foods and supplements may help alleviate muscular pain since aching muscles are essentially a type of inflammation.

In this case, amino acids are very beneficial. So meals rich in L-citrulline, like watermelon or BCAA supplements, may help you recover faster. Magnesium and turmeric may also help.

2. Hot or Cold Therapy Could Be Beneficial

After a hard exercise, using heat, such as a warm compress or taking a warm bath, may help relieve aching muscles.

Cold treatment, such as using an ice pack or an ice bath, may also help relieve muscular pain.

3. Use a Foam Roller

Foam rollers provide self-myofascial massage, which helps relieve tension in your myofascial tissue, which is the connective tissue surrounding your muscles.

You can receive the advantages of a deep, relaxing massage on your own by gently rolling out your tight muscles using a foam roller.

4. Maintain Hydration

Whether you’re performing an intense activity or not, it’s always important to stay hydrated.

However, when it comes to aching muscles, hydration not only helps drain away excess lactic acid but also helps you perform better overall. Improved performance also influences how painful you’ll be after exercising if you don’t use proper techniques.

How to Prevent Strained Muscles in the Future?

Sure, it’s quite normal to want to avoid exercising when we’re achy and uncomfortable to prevent aggravating our pain. However, exercising when hurting should not prevent you from working out.

Sore muscles are normal, and as long as you’re not in too much pain, performing the same or a little lower-intensity exercise that made you sore should be completely safe and may even assist with your symptoms.

1. Integrate Warm-Ups and Cool-Downs Routines

While there isn’t much, you can do to avoid muscle pain completely, warming up before and cooling down after a workout may help alleviate any unpleasant sensations while also preserving your muscles from damage.

It’s important to remember that stretching before a workout isn’t always the greatest option. Instead, a warm-up should consist of dynamic exercises that raise your heart rate while gently moving your muscles.

Then, as part of your cool down, you’ll be able to do static stretches and foam rolling to assist in relaxing your muscles and speed up any discomfort.

2. Muscle Pain Is Not a Fitness Indicator

In other words, no matter how fit they are, even bodybuilders and elite athletes suffer muscular pain.

Sure, as your muscles strengthen, you should do the same exercises with less pain. However, when the intensity of an exercise increases, you’ll always feel a bit sore, and this isn’t an indication that you’re out of shape or unfit.

3. Consult a Doctor if Pain Lasts

While DOMS may persist for a few days after a workout, painful muscles that remain more than seven days without additional activity should be taken seriously.

If your muscular pain lasts longer than a week, you should visit a doctor. 

Other Things to Consider

Muscle aches and pains are common. They recover their strength and can operate at a greater intensity for longer periods of time.

Make sure you don’t damage your muscles, tendons, or joints, however. Pain around the joint may indicate a more severe injury.

Try the RICE method if you believe you have a strain or sprain.

1. The RICE Method

You may need to rest the injury completely or partially. It will be determined by the severity of the situation.

Start by using ice packs, ice baths, or ice massages to relieve pain. Swelling, discomfort, bruising, and you may reduce muscular spasms with these. Ice may be used for up to three days following an accident.

Then, you’ll want to wrap your injuries can help to minimize swelling and bruising. Wrap the injury in a bandage for up to a week after it occurs.

Keep your injury to the level of or above your heart. This helps to minimize bruising and swelling. If possible, keep it raised for two to three hours each day.

Ready to Give Your Body Some TLC?

No one likes to deal with muscle soreness, even though it’s a part-and-parcel of getting exercise and moving your body. However, that doesn’t mean that you should passively wait for the pain to go away. 

We hope that our guide has shed some light on how you can ease muscle pains in gentle ways. And, if you’re new to the world of fitness, you’ll definitely want to check out our additional tips and tricks. All of them will be available in our lifestyle and health sections.