Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) is a form of delayed muscle pain (myalgia). Muscle pain can occur as a result of various infectious diseases. However, in most cases, it is a result of muscle overuse experienced one or several days after exercising. There is also a form of muscle pain during and immediately after exercising, which is mainly related to lactic acid.
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Cause of Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness
In the fitness world, it’s often said that muscle pain is a good indication of effective training. This isn’t entirely correct. It’s true that you need to train at a certain intensity to provide a form of stress to the body. However, this should be done correctly and progressively.
This principle is also known as Progressive Overload. Progressive Overload refers to gradually increasing training stimuli (stress) to make progress. This adaptation to training stimuli (stress) is the most important concept of training and conditioning.
If you experience severe muscle pain after every workout, it could be an initial form of overtraining. This doesn’t result in becoming stronger or gaining muscle mass. Quite the opposite. I discussed this in detail in the article on overtraining syndrome and a separate article on overtraining and muscle breakdown.
Having muscle pain during your workouts mainly prevents you from training at a good intensity, thus, you cannot provide the right training stimulus.
When Does Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness Occur
Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) occurs 24-48 hours after exercising, resulting in sensitive and irritable muscles. Strength training can cause micro-tears in the muscle fibers. With adequate rest and good nutrition (protein), these muscle fibers recover and even grow larger, leading to muscle hypertrophy.
A training exercise often involves three different muscle actions:
- Concentric (Concentric contraction)
- Eccentric (Eccentric contraction)
- Isometric (Static/Isometric contraction)
To explain this principle properly, let’s look at the Squat.
In an eccentric contraction, the muscle produces less force than the resistance. This results in the muscle lengthening under tension. This occurs when you lower slowly during a Squat exercise (also see negative training).
In an isometric contraction, you exert force, but there is no movement. So, the muscle doesn’t lengthen or shorten (during that phase). This is the brief phase during the Squat before you go back up.
In a concentric contraction, you exert more force than the resistance. This results in the shortening of the muscle. This happens during the upward movement in the Squat.
DOMS mainly occurs in the eccentric contraction phase. Small micro-tears in the muscles occur primarily because the muscle stretches. This results in more tears than during the concentric contraction phase, where the muscle shortens.
Preventing Muscle Pain
Continuously experiencing severe muscle pain isn’t pleasant, so athletes and researchers are always looking for ways to reduce this.
The methods most commonly used to achieve this are warming up, cooling down, and stretching. However, we have extensively described these methods here based on dozens of studies. Despite ‘popular opinion,’ the effect of all three seems to be absent, small, or negligible.
The same applies to massage and its effect on muscle pain. Most studies show no or a negligible effect. In cases where a significant effect is observed, the setup is such that these conclusions cannot be generalized. Think of a test group with only three participants. In other cases, the effects of various interventions are lumped together, making it impossible to determine whether it was the warm-up, cool-down, stretching, or massages that reduced muscle pain.
Embrace the Good Pain
DOMS is simply part of the adaptation process, resulting in thicker muscle fibers, making the muscle stronger and leading to increased strength.
So, it’s absolutely not bad to experience muscle pain after training, as long as it’s not too severe, and proper rest is taken during this time (or by training a different muscle group). It’s no coincidence that we posted ‘an ode to muscle pain’ on this blog.
