Health Tips : Muscle soreness and weightlifting

By Winston Salem in : Fitness Tips // Aug 27 2010

Muscle soreness can happen to any of us at any time. It normally always happens to individuals who are just starting an exercise program, but can also happen to trained exercise enthusiasts who overload excessively, or who change from one activity to another, or work the same set of muscles in a new and different way.

You might want to be certain you’re providing ample time for your muscles to recover from lifting – ordinarily forty-eight hours. This means that your strength workouts must be every second or third day.

If you’ve to lift every day, do not work the same muscle groups, or work opposing groups and secondary muscles. For  instance, work chest and triceps one day, back and biceps the next.

Although at one time lactic acid was believed to be involved in muscle soreness, exercise physiologists no longer believe this is so. Lactic acid is long gone from the muscles before soreness occurs.

Soreness could be caused by a few factors, including small tears in the muscle fibers or connective tissue, muscle spasms, and perhaps over stretching.

It’s also known that eccentric muscle contractions and, to some extent, isometric contractions cause more soreness than concentric ones.

As a reminder, in a concentric contraction, the muscle shortens as it overcomes the resistance, as in an upward curl with a weight.

Lowering the weight, as the muscle acts to oppose gravity, lengthens the muscle and this is an eccentric contraction. an isometric movement is one in which the object is too heavy to move, even though muscle force is being applied.

To prevent soreness, don’t overload, but slowly increase the amount of weight or number of repetitions you do.

Give yourself time between sets… one to three minutes, and include warm-up and cool-down stretching exercises in addition to your lifting.

Eating a healthy snack after exercise can also be a no sweat way to help your muscles to recover and prevent soreness.

Attempt to do this from 15 minutes to an hour after your workout has ended, and pick carbohydrate and protein-rich foods such as peanut butter on toast, slices of turkey breast or cheese on a bagel, or some milk and a banana.

Because your muscles can only store about an hour’s worth of carbohydrates (in the form of glycogen), it is important to replenish that as soon as possible.

The protein will help to maintain and rebuild your muscle cells, and depending on how much you are consuming, can also be used in increasing the size of your muscles.