What is delayed onset muscle soreness?
DOMS is a sign of muscle overload. It’s the achy muscle feeling you get the day following exercise when getting out of a chair or pick up your kids. This feeling tends to only last one to two days before settling down and recovering. DOMS in isolation is not necessarily a bad thing; it's showing you that you are loading your musculature enough to force adaptation. Overtime this loading will condition your muscles for both strength and endurance in varying degrees depending on how you are training.
Resistance training has more benefits than pure strength and conditioning such as:
- Increased bone density;
- Weight management, therefore, obesity, heart attack, diabetes, etc;
- Improved flexibility and balance;
- Reduce or prevent cognitive decline;
- Pain management;
- Reduce the risk of injury;
- And improved mood and sleep quality to name a few.
How do I know if my delayed soreness is bad or good?
DOMS can indicate that you may be pushing too hard! If ignored for long enough it can lead to injuries such as tendinopathy (overload of the tendons) that can take months to recover. If your symptoms are lasting over two days, you are likely pushing too hard and need to slow down to allow your body to adapt. This can be difficult to identify in the gym environment as the symptoms are latent, in other words, they will typically appear the day following loading after cooling down.
How to manage your program and symptoms.
The best way to manage this is to track or monitor exactly what loads you are doing. There are so many apps to track what you're doing at the gym or even when you're out for a run.
To help lessen the chance of delayed onset soreness, make sure you incorporate a good quality 'cool down routine' into your program. You can do this in the form of a brisk walk on the treadmill, swim, or stretching. Don't forget a foam roller can be your best friend!
Understanding DOMS can lead to better outcomes whether it's weights or cardiovascular training and reduce the risk of injuries.
Humans are not physically normal in the absence of hard physical effort. Exercise is not a thing we do to fix a problem - it is a thing we must do anyway, a thing without which there will always be problems. - Mark Rippetoe
Written by Mark Griffiths, Physiotherapist
Mark's interests lay in helping people with their physical health and achieving their fitness goals. He has a keen interest in strength and conditioning as he is an avid gym-goer and Veteran's health as he himself was in the Army for 12 years.