How To Prevent—And Deal With It
Whether you skipped a few days at the gym before making your brave return or decided to try out a new metabolic class instead of your usual Pilates routine, you may have experienced that horrible muscle soreness 48 hours later.
What your were feeling is officially known as DOMS, or delayed-onset muscle soreness. DOMS “is the result of microtrauma to the muscle and surrounding tissue that provokes an inflammatory response.”
The good news is that aches and pains are not permanent—they typically take less than a week to go away. You can generally avoid post-workout muscle soreness by taking the right precautions.
How to Prevent Muscle Soreness
Try these strategies to limit post-workout soreness:
Up your intensity slowly. If you work out longer and harder AND boost the intensity of your workout each time, DOMS becomes somewhat unavoidable. Instead, try making things more difficult little by little. If you’re lifting weights, try either moving up in sets and reps with lower weights or increasing the weight but not the reps. “Upping the difficulty slowly will help keep muscle soreness to more desirable levels.”
If you’re sore all the time, you may need to add in another rest day!
