Muscle Soreness,Tissue damage
Muscle Soreness,Tissue damage. Starting a workout program can be challenging, making the time to exercise, creating a balanced routine, and setting goals are hard enough, but add to that the muscle soreness that comes with adapting to that regimen, and it may be difficult to stay on track.
We’ve all been there: You’ve crushed a tough workout only to be rewarded with stiff, aching muscles the morning after.
For some individuals, sore muscles are a reward after a hard workout. In fact, some people aren’t happy unless they’re sore after their workout, while others could live without it. Either way, all of us have probably experienced muscle soreness at one time or another. In this chapter, we will review the causes of muscle soreness, the anatomy of tissue damage and recovery.
What is Muscle Soreness and its causes?
After participating in some kind of strenuous physical activity, particularly something new to your body, it is common to experience muscle soreness, say experts.
Muscles go through quite a bit of physical stress when we exercise,” says Rick Sharp, professor of exercise physiology at Iowa State University in Ames.
“Mild soreness just a natural outcome of any kind of physical activity,” he says. “And they’re most prevalent in beginning stages of a program.
Sore muscles after physical activity, known as delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS),can occur when you start a new exercise program, change your exercise routine, or increase the duration or intensity of your regular workout.
When muscles are required to work harder than they’re used to or in a different way, it’s believed to cause microscopic damage to the muscle fibers, resulting in muscle soreness or stiffness.
DOMS is often mistakenly believed to be caused by a build–up of lactic acid, but lactic acid isn’t involved in this process.
So, what causes muscle soreness?
Despite the prevalence of DOMS, the exact mechanisms that cause it are not totally understood. Currently, most think it’s a result of microscopic tears in the muscle and surrounding connective tissue as a result of eccentric exercise.
The eccentric phase of a movement occurs when a muscle is lengthening (sometimes referred to as doing “negatives”). Classic examples would be lowering a dumbbell back to its starting position during bicep curls or running downhill.
But the actual cause is swelling in the muscle compartment that results from an influx of white blood cells, prostaglandins (which are anti–inflammatory), and other nutrients and fluids that flow to the muscles to repair the “damage” after a tough workout.
The type of muscle damage we are referring to is microscopic (it occurs in small protein contractile units of the muscle called myofibrils) and is part of the normal process of growth in the body called anabolism.
And DOMS isn’t just about soreness. Symptoms can include weakness, stiffness, and sensitivity to touch. The discomfort usually starts to appear within 12 to 24 hours after exercise, peaks after 24 to 72 hours, and should disappear within three to five days.
How can I treat DOMS? (Muscle Soreness, Tissue Damage)
It used to be thought that speeding recovery and preventing DOMS was as simple as increasing protein, fats, and carbohydrates intake. This can certainly help overall recovery, but won’t have a dramatic impact on soreness.
No therapy that consistently increases the speed at which DOMS is relieved has been found, but some therapies may work if applied right after exercise.
Tips to Cure DOMS:
1. Active recovery Session
We first read about this from Chad Waterbury: his recommendation is to pick 20% of your max and do 2 sets of 40–50 reps for partial mid–range reps. For example, if you have sore legs do 40–50 bodyweight squats without locking out. The goal is not to create a training effect but to flush blood through the affected muscles.
2. Get your post–workout shake in
Protein is the big one, and timing does appear to make a difference when it comes to DOMS. If you’re fancy, you can throw in some glutamine and BCAA too, with a number of other benefits.
3. Stay Hydrated
We don’t need to convince you of the benefits of water, although surprisingly it doesn’t appear to have an effect on DOMS.
4. Walking
Walking is a good way to flush blood into the muscle. Do it fasted to get a fat loss kick too.
5. Caffeine
Caffeine, taken the day after training has been shown to improve force output of sore muscles in addition to attenuating soreness.
6. Contrast baths/showers
Other studies have shown that, at least in trained athletes, cold water baths or alternating hot–and–cold water baths may have a positive effect on recovery time. Before you start filling your tub with ice, though, note that these studies didn’t examine pain relief, only performance recovery.
7. Train again
Often if you have a few days off, then have a heavy session, you can be more sore than normal. Paradoxically when we are doing any high–frequency training (training between 6 and 10 times per week) soreness disappears (repeated bout effect).
8. Eat more, sleep more
Sometimes if you’re sore all the time, it’s simply that you didn’t eat enough. Up the protein & carbs.
Take adequate amount of rest. Sleep about 7–9 hours will help in relieving sore muscles.
9. Fascial stretches pre/post–workout
Fascial stretches help with muscle soreness when used pre and post workout. However, go easy with these. Stretching feels good but overdoing it when you’re already sore can increase DOMS, according to some data.
10. Foam rolling/massage
Finally, with the weakest evidence basis (and least fun) is foam rolling 2 hours post–exercise, or better, still get a sports massage. The rationale is that it may interrupt some of the mechanisms that induce DOMS.
The intended soft tissue work is not to eliminate DOMS per se, but to keep your tissue in decent enough quality long term, to prevent dysfunctional patterns, tightness and muscle adhesions.
11. Ice (Muscle Soreness,Tissue damage)
Applying ice is shown to reduce perceived soreness, but doesn’t aid in muscle recovery and may impede it in the long term. Ming Chew also advises against ice, to avoid causing fascial restriction.
DOMS doesn’t generally require medical intervention. But you should seek medical advice if the pain becomes unbearable, you experience heavy swelling, or your urine becomes dark.
What Can Cause Tissue Damage? (Muscle Soreness, Tissue Damage)
When the body sustains damage from trauma, disease or simple wear and tear, it normally results in the formation of a lesion or cartilage gap on your joint surface. Cartilage is the smooth “Teflon like” tissue that covers the ends of your bones and allows your joints to move smoothly against each other.
When cartilage is damaged or has worn away the bone underneath is exposed resulting in a lesion that causes pain and discomfort. One way of treating this lesion is to use the body’s own healing mechanisms to create a clot which will eventually turn into tissue and cover the lesion (exposed bone).
The marrow in your bones is full of stem cells, growth factors and other biological building blocks that can form new tissue. This response is similar to the healing process of a “scar”, specifically, the way a scab grows over a cut.
Tissue Damage can be caused by numerous unexpected events such as:
- A Sprain
- Tendon Tear
- Arthritis
- Fibromyalgia
- Traumatic Events (Car accident)
- Infections
- Any activity runs the risk of injury.
When a wound presents itself, either internally or externally, they are often the result of a void or loss of tissue. In medicine, wounds are also referred to as lesions, defects, scars or tears.
As part of the body’s normal healing mechanisms, a biological process begins to repair the damage. In order to strengthen the body’s own healing mechanisms, allograft tissue or some type of biological therapy is used to cover the wounded area, fill the tissue void and/or accelerate the healing process.
Grafts function like a “biological blanket” by reducing adhesions or scarring and the scaffold can act as a new layer to augment the closure of the wound.
When a cartilage gap or arthritic bone occurs, it can be very painful and debilitating.
How muscle heal and recover from injury? (Muscle Soreness, Tissue Damage)
Your muscles heal very differently than your bones. If you fracture a bone, as long as it is set and fixed in place properly, it will tend to heal so thoroughly that it will become stronger than it was before the fracture!
Bone tissue heals with calcium and other minerals, components of bone, in a process that creates a bond that is as strong or stronger than the original bone structure.
Lloyd, for example, breaks his leg and strains (pulls) several muscles in a skiing accident. The fractured bone is set, his leg is placed in a cast, and after the requisite amount of time, the cast is removed. It’s as good as new or even better—the bone anyway…
Your muscles, however, do not actually heal with muscle tissue, but with “foreign” substances including collagen. The resulting scar tissue is weaker, less elastic, and highly prone to re–injury. Once a muscle is damaged, it can become the source of a great deal of pain.
The standard medical response to muscular injuries is still mostly painkillers, anti– inflammatory drugs, and rest. The medication does little more than numb the pain and suppresses the inflammation. The symptoms are effectively reduced, but these are the symptoms of the injury—not the injury itself.
Drugs can actually slow the healing process, and too much rest can be counterproductive as well since muscle tissue needs a certain amount of movement as it heals, and will begin to atrophy (shrink) if not used.
Unfortunately for Lloyd, the casting and immobilization of his leg, which was crucial for the proper healing of the bone, was not exactly what his injured muscles needed.
Now over a year has passed, including several months of vigorous physical therapy sessions, and x–rays show that the bone has completely healed and there are no other complications.
Lloyd however, notices that although his injured leg seems to be just as strong as it was before the accident, it is nowhere near as flexible, and he finds himself in pain whenever he runs or cycles, two activities he was able to perform painlessly before the skiing accident.
What muscles need in order to heel as fully as possible? (Muscle Soreness, Tissue Damage)
In order for a car to go forward properly, all of its tires need to be aligned in the same direction (unless it’s turning). In a similar manner, for your muscles to function properly, all of their fibers need to be aligned in the same direction.
When you have a muscle that has been injured, however, the initial repair process creates a “patch” of random scar tissue fibers.
Like a weak link in a chain, the random alignment of these new fibers becomes a “weak link” in your muscle, leaving it highly susceptible to re–injury.
Like a weak link in a chain, the random alignment of these new fibers becomes a “weak link” in your muscle, leaving it highly susceptible to re–injury.
Oddly, our bodies do not have an efficient internal mechanism for accomplishing this. It’s somewhat haphazard, gradually improving over time but often not resolving completely, which can become quite a problem.
The problem is that the nervous system essentially “overreacts” to even microscopic areas of scar tissue, by keeping the muscle in a shortened, inflamed, and usually painful state.
The inflammation process is the first stage of healing and by keeping the muscle short, the nervous system is trying to protect it from further harm, these reactions, however, can continue well past the point of being productive—in fact, they can continue indefinitely.
Even a small muscular injury can lead to a chronic pain pattern which persists for months or even years, because the nervous “system stays on alert,” waiting for the scar tissue to heal completely and become aligned with the surrounding muscle tissue.
How Muscle Damage Maximizes Bodybuilding Progress?
Anyone who has trained intensely with weights will have experienced localized muscle pain, often referred to as Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (or DOMS).
Indeed, the pain we experience post training can provide valuable feedback to ensure we feed, rest, and modify our workouts to provoke optimal muscle mass gains.
Unlike the burn of a workout or the deep chronic stabbing pain of an injury, post– training muscle soreness, which may occur 24 to 72 hours after training and may last from 2–3 days, is characterized by stiffness, swelling, and strength loss.
Often viewed as a sign of a good workout, muscle pain has become an accurate, albeit non–scientific barometer, of whether a target muscle has received adequate stimulation.
Weight training newcomers are especially aware of the searing muscle pain associated with ultra–hard workouts; for them, such pain may be so severe that they suspect an injury has occurred.
This pain may even have radiated into a joint, giving the impression that connective tissue damage has taken place.
But rather than blame their trainer for pushing them too far, and being dissuaded from continuing their training efforts, they must realize that such pain is actually a sign of progress.
The major goal of serious trainers is to ensure that our muscles, between workouts, adapt to the imposed training stress to prevent chronic injurious muscle damage and to minimize further soreness. Prolonged soreness following training may reflect a failure to properly recover between workouts.
Bodybuilding training, done properly, is heavily associated with the production of pain.
In fact, many who train for muscle growth specifically seek muscle soreness both during their workouts and in the days following their training. However, only one type of pain will encourage the gains we seek.
Indeed, the soreness we experience during our workouts does not contribute to DOMS.Instead, rather than the lactic acid influenced chemical changes within the muscle, it is the structural changes resulting from actual muscle damage that create the conditions for growth.
Though it’s hard to say whether the extent of post–training muscle soreness is an indication of the amount of muscle damage incurred, it is true that a degree of pain does signal an adaptation process during which the muscle changes its structure to prevent further soreness from the same movement (the so–called “Repeated Bout Effect”).
But because our muscles, over time, increasingly adapt to our training efforts to prevent further damage and pain, we must negate this process by exponentially increasing the intensity of our workouts.
This is most easily done by increasing weight lifted, varying reps and sets, adding new exercises, improving technique, or incorporating intensity techniques such as rest/pause and supersets.
Conclusion:
We have determined what muscle damage is and why it’s needed. The key to ensuring we prosper from it is to bring about the conditions that enable us to fully recover between workouts.
By training while our muscles are sore we may become over–trained, and, over time, may regress in our training progress.
By speeding the healing process, however, we may shorten the length of time we experience muscle pain and thereby translate muscle microtrauma into muscle–building results. We must tear our muscles down, but we must also build them back up, bigger and stronger.