First off, let me briefly explain why your muscles get sore in the first place. When you are working out, no matter the workout, you will experience little tears in your muscles. The more intense the workout, the larger the tears. Now, while this sounds like a bad thing, it's actually exactly what you want. Just like when you break a bone and the doctor reassures you that when it heals it will be stronger than before, your muscles (when properly cared for through diet and continued fitness) will grow back larger and stronger. Your body goes to work straight away on repairing those tears, for example, when your body starts breaking down carbohydrates (which is exactly what exercise does), then lactic acid is produced and disbursed throughout the body. Now, in the past, people blamed lactic acid for muscle soreness, but truthfully its out of your system before you feel any of the real fatigue. Anyway, that's another topic for another day, back to relieving soreness!
Here are a few tips you can use to help you fight the battle against muscle soreness. *disclaimer* you can't fight off all of it, you can just make the soreness more manageable! So here we go:
Warm Up: Don't skip warming up before you workout. A warm up can be as little as 3 to 4 minutes and still do your body a ton of good. Warm ups should NOT consist of deep stretching or high impact moves. Ideal warm up moves would be jogging, lifting very light weights, lunging, squatting, rolling your shoulders, etc etc etc. Whatever you do start with small movements and as you feel your body warming up make them bigger movements, this is referred to as progressive warm ups.
Cool Down Stretching: When you finish your workout that is the time for stretching. Your muscles are now warm and pliable and therefore less susceptible to being pulled or seriously injured. This is where you can not only combat the soreness you may be feeling the next day, but it's also a good time to work on increasing your flexibility. While to some, especially men, this does not seem important, let me remind you that the more flexible the muscle the more strength potential it has!
HOT HOT HOT: A hot bath, soak in a hot tub, or use of heating pad to areas that have just been worked out will help you out tremendously. This helps to relax the muscles and let the healing process begin. When something is heated, it will expand, that's not any different for your muscles. When your muscles are expanded then fluids and nutrients can be streamlined to them with more ease.
Massage: This one is a love/hate tip for me. Massaging the affected areas of soreness will help push out any excess fluids in the muscle and stimulate the healing process. While the natural response to something sore is "DON'T TOUCH IT! LEAVE IT ALONE! I WILL EAT YOUR SOUL!" We do need to work them out with tissue massage for faster recuperation.
Compression Clothing: You know those ultra cute but ultra expensive Under Armour outfits, they aren't cheap for a reason! Not only does compression clothing help you during your workout with friction issues (man i used to get some itchy legs from flab on flab action!) But they aid in post workout as well. Wearing compression garments over the area you just worked will improve circulation to that region, that means more pure oxygen will be swarming to the muscle and giving CPR to them.
Nutrition: From the minute you finish your workout till about an hour later is a moment called "the Anabolic Window" This is when your muscles are the most hungry. I've just explained that after the carbs are broken down via exercise, the lactic acid is formed and released, and that in post workout hormones trigger responses in your body to send all nutrients, blood, oxygen, so on and so forth to those muscle tears to start repairing them. Sooooooo, this means during that first hour you need a GREAT protein source in your system via a fast metabolising protein such as whey instead of a slow digesting protein like casein. This will get the protein straight to that torn muscle and build a stronger and bigger muscle. Likewise, you will need some carbs in your system during post workout, from a fruit such as a banana is good with the added potassium, but there are also post workout drinks if you don't feel like making yourself a meal and forcing yourself to eat it. I use Results and Recovery formula which has a blend of protein, carbs, and fat to replenish the body after a tough workout. I also add a little bit of extra unflavored protein to it for extra muscle support.
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