Should I be Sore After a Workout?
As a trainer, I get asked that a lot. Many people rate their workout on how sore they are the next day - if they are sore, it’s a success, and if they’re not, they’re disappointed. Sometimes I even find myself making that same mistake even though I know better. It’s such a love/hate relationship too. Once we get into a regular workout routine, why is it that we are so obsessed with post-workout soreness? The severity of soreness actually depends on you and your workout, and everybody is different. Let me explain what I’m talking about...
Why am I sore after a workout?
When your muscles get sore, it’s because they are being used in a way they aren’t used to. So, if you are new to exercise, or even doing a new exercise or exercise routine, you might feel sore for up to 72 hours or more afterward. After repeating the same thing many times, your muscles adapt and stop feeling sore. Everyone’s body is different and adapts at different times. (Any chance this sounds familiar from my resilience post?) . While your muscles are learning to adapt, there are various ways in which we can reduce soreness, such as stretching, Epsom salt baths, and the steam from a steam room.
What if I’m not sore after a workout?
After repeating the same exercises and/or routine for a while (several times per week, for several weeks), your muscles adapt, causing the frequency and severity of soreness to decrease. Your muscles can adapt to doing the same exercises, routine, reps, sets, tempo, etc. Even making a change to one of the above will affect how your muscles adapt. Note: The average time to change up an exercise program is every 4-6 weeks.
Adaptation means there are less micro tears in the muscles, resulting in less soreness and faster recovery. This is a positive, not negative - it means your body is changing, and getting stronger. If you regularly exercised several times a week with the same style workout and was always in excruciating musculare pain, then that would be more of problem as it means your body is not adapting and growing.
Many of us fall into the trap of, “If I’m not sore, then it’s not a good workout.” (Trust me, I do too. I love those days where I can’t walk up the stairs or sit down.) But let’s be real here, exercise is already hard enough, and many people don’t do it, imagine if you were always extremely sore after a workout, would you be doing it as much? I doubt I would. (Shhh, I didn’t just say that. Today for example, my legs are actually really sore from a CrossFit style workout - something I do on the rare occasion - and I keep complaining that I have no idea how I’m going to manage to teach tomorrow. If I was sore like this every day, it would be a problem for my career.)
Once you establish a regular exercise routine, you might find you’re no longer sore after your workouts. This doesn’t mean your workouts aren’t effective, it just means you’re adapting/ getting stronger and need to up the ante. When you get to this point you might notice muscle soreness from doing a new exercise that forces your muscles to be used differently. Or, you may be sore from doing a targeted workout where you are repeatedly concentrating on a specific muscle (or group of muscles), such as your legs, biceps, or chest. As an example, I usually have little to no soreness in my lower body, and my upper only gets sore from hour long targeted strength workouts.
To help you know if your workouts are effective or not, it’s important to be aware of your progress and use that as a guide. Ask yourself the following questions and really think about the answers:
1. Are you able to do more reps or lift heavier weights than when you first started?
2. Are you becoming more toned?
3. Do your clothes fit you differently?
4. Are you able to push through a tough workout better than you used to?
5. Do you walk away from each of your workouts feeling like you’ve given it your all?
If your answer was “yes” to most of the above questions, then most likely your exercise routine is working for you even if you’re not sore after it. This can just be a sign that your hard work is paying off and you’re becoming fitter, yay! If you really don’t feel like you’re improving, or if you’re becoming bored/ dreading your workouts (and you didn’t previously), then it’s time to switch things up! It’s important that you enjoy what you do, it will help with your resilience of coming back for more!