David R Clarke, Carl Langen-Evans and Rob Erskine, Liverpool John Moores University Liverpool: When it comes to good health, the common saying is “something has to be lost to gain”. The same thing comes to mind when you feel pain after exercising. It may also happen that many of us think that if there is pain after a workout, it means that you have worked out enough. There can be many reasons for your muscles to ache after a workout. But, contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to feel pain in the hours or days after exercise to know you’ve had a good workout.
Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is a scientific term that describes pain in our muscles after a workout. Usually, this happens when we do particularly strenuous exercise, or if we exercise but we are not used to it. It can happen after any type of exercise, although it is more common after vigorous exercise. These are movements where the muscles resist the load when stretched (such as when you are running downhill or descending stairs). The smaller muscles of the upper limb (such as your biceps and shoulders) may be more vulnerable to DOMS because they are not accustomed to strenuous exercise.
While DMS can occur hours after a workout, it usually peaks after about two days, depending on the intensity and amount of exercise. But although it is common, its cause is not yet understood – although researchers have some theories as to why it happens. The current scientific theory is that DMS is associated with a combination of: mechanical damage (to the protein structure of muscle fibers), damage to the membrane that surrounds the muscle fiber, damage to the connective tissue surrounding the muscle fiber, the body’s inflammatory response, Causes the breakdown of muscle proteins and stimulates certain nerves, causing pain.
read also
Some degree of exercise-induced muscle damage is probably necessary to help build bigger, stronger muscles. In fact, the damage caused to muscles by exercise can affect muscle efficiency (sometimes for up to two weeks), making you less likely to experience DOMS the next time you exercise. This may also explain why people who exercise regularly do not often experience DOMS. Regular weight training, focusing on strenuous exercises (such as squats, deadlifts and bench presses) also helps reduce the harmful effects of exercise on muscles after ten training sessions. There can be many reasons for this, but the main reason is to get better at protecting the muscles from damage.
How often and how severe a person experiences DOMS varies from person to person. However, older people may be more vulnerable to both exercise-induced muscle damage and DMS, possibly due to their muscles being less able to recover after strenuous exercise. Research has also shown that people with a certain genetic structure are more able to recover from strenuous exercise than others who do the same workout.
If you’re starting a new exercise program and your first workout is particularly intense or long-lasting, it’s very difficult to avoid DOMS. Adding more eccentric workouts to your training program can also lead to DMS. But having pain doesn’t mean you’ve done more effective exercise — it just means you’re doing something your muscles aren’t used to. (agency)
