Why muscle soreness might not mean what you think - how to ensure you are making gains
You have just started in the gym,
maybe you have just come back after some time off,
or,
maybe you are a gym addict looking to maximise every session.
You want to feel like your efforts are going to pay off.
So you look for every sign of success.
That pain in your muscles the next day.
Ahh yes. Sweet success.
What if I told you that soreness is not everything you expected it to be?
Muscular Soreness (DOMS).
What is muscular soreness?
Also known as DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness),
muscular soreness is a phenomenon that can occur after heavy bouts of physical activity.
DOMS is caused by microtears in the muscles during a bout of exercise.
These micro tears cause inflammation at the muscle which gives that feeling of pain 24-72 hours post-exercise.
Although DOMS usually occurs in untrained people,
it can also happen in advanced trainees.
This is why soreness is often used as a sign of progress for regular gym-goers.
But also a dread to beginners at the gym.
Although this can be true, it can also be due to several other factors.
To understand why this is not true,
firstly we should look at why DOMS is more common in untrained individuals versus trained individuals.
Untrained vs Trained DOMS.
To understand DOMS,
we need to understand that training is a process of stress adaptation.
Exercise is a stress placed on the body which then requires an appropriate physiological response.
This response is inflammation.
Simply put,
an untrained individual gets more sore than a trained individual because their body is less capable of dealing with exercise-induced stress.
This is due to a lack of adaptation from exercise stress due to inactivity.
An untrained person will require less total stress during a workout to cause microtears.
Then subsequently, less work is required to cause that inflammatory adaptation process.
Whereas,
an advanced trainee who regularly trains will require more overall stress and work to cause the same level of microtears.
Tying this back to the start, this is why most advanced trainees look for DOMS, even purposely trying to seek it.
Because it is a sign that there is a process of adaptation occurring.
However, this mentality is wrong for a couple of reasons.
Stress Looks Different.
Using DOMS as a metric of success is a poor measure because non-specific stress can cause the same physiological response.
What I mean by that is
the stressor can be very different and not specific to the progress you want, but still elicit the same physiological response.
As I mentioned earlier,
what you train, you adapt to.
As a general example,
let’s look at a guitar player.
When a guitarist plays the guitar,
in the process of compressing the strings to cause a certain note to occur,
the player can usually feel pain at the fingertip because of the stress on the skin to maintain a compressed guitar string.
If you want to get better at guitar, feeling the pain in your fingers from compressing the strings is a sign of guitar practice and thus progress.
But then deciding to go and play the bass is not going to make you better at guitar even though the stress caused by string compression is the same.
In a training example,
If you wanted to train your bicep to get bigger biceps,
should you go train on the rower or ski-erg?
The answer is no.
Even though this stressor would be sufficiently different and difficult to cause DOMS in your arms, shoulder, and back,
It is not specific to your desired outcome.
In the same way if you wanted bigger legs you would not go and run a marathon.
You would also pull up quite sore, but it is not specific to the desired outcome.
So for these reasons, seeking DOMS alone is not a sign of success.
DOMS is caused by an inability to cope with the stressor.
This physiological response can be voluntarily initiated by manipulating the stressor you are exposed to.
The stressor can be anything from:
change in weight
duration
intensity
range of motion
exercise selection
However, manipulating these variables might not give you the outcomes you want even though you will get DOMS.
It is because you will not be working on a specific type of stress which will help to improve your area of focus.
A good program will probably result in you not pulling up sore after some time.
This is because the same initial trauma response to the program has subsided.
But you might sit there and think, well then don’t I want to change the stimulus to initiate more progress?
The answer is also no.
This is because inflammation is not the only physiological process of progress.
Not Just Inflammation.
Inflammation is not the only adaptation process that occurs from training.
Other adaptations occur such as neuromuscular efficiency and practice effect.
Without getting into heavy physiology science,
neuromuscular efficiency is where the motor neurons are capable of producing a stronger muscular response from the same stimuli.
This means that a similar physical stressor can be dealt with more easily just as a process of better recruitment of the muscles.
This is a process that occurs independently of the DOMS effect.
A good quick example of this fact can be demonstrated in the example below.
Have you ever seen someone much physically smaller perform a feat that would match someone who is much more physically developed than them?
Yes.
This is because although a sign of strength is the cross-sectional area of muscle, also known as the muscle size,
It is the ability of the individual to recruit their muscles which is the difference.
The neuromuscular efficiency.
Further to this, there is another phenomenon that improves performance called the practice effect.
This is where individuals are more capable of performing a task simply because they have had practice at it previously.
The previous exposure to the task has prepared you mentally to execute the task again.
If you are looking to improve at a performance-based task, then simple practice will make you more capable of performing the task indiscriminately of muscular physiological changes (DOMS).
So what does this mean in simple terms?
How to know if you are making gains?
If you want to truly determine if you are making progress,
you need to take DOMS in consideration with a range of different factors.
DOMS is good because it will tell you that you have done something difficult or something new.
But the problem lies in the fact that if you just chase DOMS then you will be losing out on potential gains.
To ensure that you are making gains,
other measures of performance should be tracked which are more reliable than DOMS.
Weight lifted.
Reps performed.
Sets performed.
Rest time taken.
Training frequency.
Rate of perceived exertion or Reps in Reserve.
Body circumference.
Body-weight
These measures used in conjunction with a specific goal,
and a specifically designed program is much more reliable.
This way you have a quantitative method of determining progress, as well as the program can be designed specifically to your goals,
rather than just doing things because it makes you sore.
If none of this article made sense to you,
you could sit there and struggle on your own for a long time trying to figure out what this all means.
Or,
you could get the most out of your training as quickly as possible learning from people who have walked the path before you.
If you want to start today to get the most out of your training,
feel free to contact us.
The choice is yours.