Geschatte leestijd: 3 minuten
One of the first signs that you have been doing fitness, strength training, or other forms of resistance training is that you can often experience muscle pain within 48 hours. Muscle pain, also called myalgia, is a phenomenon that can cause stiffness and pain in the muscles from 24 to 72 hours after training. In this article, we want to delve deeper into muscle pain, because what is muscle pain, what causes it, and what types are there? Finally, we also want to give you advice on how to deal with it to help it recover and reduce pain.
What is muscle pain?
Muscle pain is a kind of protective mechanism of the body. When you have heavily exerted the muscles, the body wants to recover and strengthen for the next load. The muscles experience small microtraumas, also called micro-ruptures, that need to be repaired. After recovery, the muscles’ capacity for exertion increases, making you stronger and the next time the same heavy load will be easier.
There are two forms in which you can divide this phenomenon:
Early muscle pain (immediate muscle soreness)
Delayed muscle pain (
delayed onset muscle soreness).
When you experience early muscle pain, the cause lies in the accumulation of lactic acid and fluid in the trained muscle groups. You will feel this quite quickly. The delayed form, also known as DOMS, is often felt after 1 or 1.5 days. DOMS is often most intense on the 2nd day, when the muscles can feel painful and stiff.
When you experience muscle pain, it is a sign that you have caused small tears in your muscles through resistance training and that your body is trying to repair this. The muscle tears are not repaired to the old level, but your muscles become thicker so that the weights should not be a problem for training next time. Hence the expression “No pain, no gain”.
Also read the article: the functioning of muscles.
Causes
The cause of muscle pain mainly lies in the eccentric phase of the fitness exercise. You can divide a fitness exercise into 2 phases: the concentric phase, or the shortening of the muscles, and the eccentric phase, the reverse movement. Examples of the concentric phase: pushing the weight during bench press, or moving the dumbbell upward when doing
biceps curls. In addition to the eccentric phase, the isometric phase is also a major cause of muscle pain. The isometric phase means that you hold the weight under tension of the muscles. Unfortunately, both phases are often neglected due to too fast execution, and in practice, the emphasis is mainly on the concentric phase. For muscle growth, this should therefore be reversed.
When do you get muscle pain
You often feel muscle pain after 24 hours of your workout, peaking after 48 hours. This is highly dependent on the intensity and variety of the training. Eccentric movements often cause more pain than static exercises and concentric movements.
Relieving muscle pain
To relieve muscle pain, you have many options, each with its own
effect. Stretching well and doing a good
warm-up can at least contribute to reducing complaints, although this effect appears to be limited.
In addition, good nutrition and rest are very important and effective. The muscles have been heavily taxed during training, and to arm themselves against the next effort, they want to grow. They can only do this if they receive the right nutrition and enough recovery. So, a balanced meal consisting of proteins, carbohydrates, and good fats can contribute to better protein synthesis and thus alleviate muscle pain.
Recovery
Muscle pain is not bad. It is a sign that your body is recovering and strengthening the muscles. If you want to achieve results, it is desirable that you occasionally experience this. However, muscle pain is not necessarily a good indication of effective training. The experience varies greatly from person to person, and the lack of muscle pain after a heavy workout does not necessarily mean that no result has been achieved for muscle growth.
