Muscle soreness: harm or benefit?

Author: Timko Ilya - master of the whole project and fitness trainer.
2012-12-08

Hello. In this article, we will discuss muscle soreness after workouts. The reason for writing it stems from frequent questions like: "Is it good that my muscles are always sore?" or "If my muscles aren't sore anymore, is that bad?" Let's start by figuring out why this happens.

I'll try to explain it simply. Muscle soreness is a symptom caused by micro-injuries that occur in muscle tissue after workouts. Essentially, these micro-injuries allow muscles to increase in size.

But why do they not hurt after every workout? The fact is, these micro-injuries do not occur all the time. They only happen under conditions of extreme and unfamiliar loads for the muscles. This means that if you apply a load to your muscles that they have already adapted to, there won't be any micro-injuries. There won't be any pain. Therefore, there won't be any growth.

In other words, micro-injuries are the response of your muscles to a load they have not yet adapted to.

It turns out, ideally, muscles should always hurt? No, that's not the case. It’s impossible to increase the load on your muscles with every workout. For muscles to withstand a new unfamiliar load, they must fully recover from the previous one. Recovery after heavy workloads takes quite a bit of time. More on this in the article Phases of recovery after workouts.

Let's say you’ve trained your legs hard. Your muscles hurt. A week later, you have another leg workout, and you come to the gym aiming to push yourself even harder so that your muscles hurt (and thus grow) again. But your legs haven’t recovered from the previous sessions. Their structure and energy reserves haven't completely restored.

What does this mean? It means that your muscles will tire more quickly than you can overload them. In other words, no matter how hard you try, you won't be able to give your muscles an unfamiliar load if they haven’t fully rested. They will simply give out halfway through. And all you will achieve is further exhaustion. This is exactly how people push themselves into overtraining. For more information on this topic, read the article How often should you train to failure.

I also want to say that even if you achieve soreness in your muscles, it doesn't necessarily mean they will grow. This will only happen if you allow them to rest fully.

Conclusions

Muscle soreness indicates that you have introduced a new load for your muscles. If you then rest adequately – their size and strength will increase. But do not try to force your muscles to be sore after every workout. They can only "digest" a heavier load if they are fully rested. This can take up to 14 days.

So, if your muscles hurt – that’s normal. If they don’t hurt – that’s also normal. But if they don’t hurt for a long time – it means you are providing a constant load without any changes. This does not contribute to their growth. You need to combine lighter and heavier loads. This way your muscles can rest and "digest" increasingly heavier loads.