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Muscle Soreness
What is muscle soreness?
It is a muscle tear, actually thousands of minor micro fiber muscle
tears in the muscle previously worked out. Sometimes the soreness
occurs during the workout or after the workout. When it occurs after your
workout, not just an hour or two later, but the next day, the sore muscle
proceeds to be even more sore than the previous day then it is classified as
Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness.
You can limit or prevent
muscle soreness by warming up the muscle you plan to exercise. To even
further prevent it you should do a warm up set with a light weight also.
After you have finished the exercises when you are at home and relaxed,
elevating the muscle may help remove the lactic acid buildup and therefore
reduce the soreness you will eventually have.
Here is a really basic
illustration of what happens to the muscles during a
weight
lifting routine, but it helps you visualize what actually happens to
each muscle...
... Picture of right leg and right side of the thigh muscle
... Side view of picture above, actual muscle fiber in the thigh, extreme
zoom
... Thigh muscle after a thigh muscle exercise or leg /
thigh workout.
Along the muscle fiber you can see tiny micro tears in the thigh muscle,
thus creating muscle soreness.
During the next phase, protein from the blood then fills in these micro
tears... after that process you are just a little bit bigger and stronger.
Sore muscle treatment
The best way to avoid having to
treat you're muscles if you feel necessary is to try and prevent it or limit
it beforehand by using the techniques mentioned above. Muscle soreness in my
eyes is a good thing, it is a sign of a good, solid workout.
Treatment options include heat
therapy and moist heat therapy ( Place a heated pad on the sore muscle and
leave for 10 minutes, 2 or 3 cycles of this may help reduce the soreness. )
Also Ice cubes may be used to help remove the lactic acid buildup,
often times swelling can occur from the sore muscle and ice cubes will help
reduce this problem.
A combination of these will help
flush out the muscles by doing a cycle of heat therapy, then ice therapy and
repeat as you feel is necessary.
Stretching and massaging are
other methods used in the sore muscle treatment. Experiments regarding the
effects of a massage resulted that it did help... but there was insufficient
data to make this experimental point a fact.
Ibuprofen, Advil or Tylenol may
be taken to temporarily relieve pain. If extended soreness occurs read the
DOMS article and consider consulting a doctor / physician.
More on
Delayed onset muscle
soreness
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