Hi everyone, I’m new to working out. I’ve mostly been walking and rowing. On Monday I incorporated body weight strength training, which included squats and lunges. Today is now Wednesday and I’m feeling the pain in my legs. How do I recover from this? Should I stick to my routine or take it easy today? I do warm up/warm down, stretch and eat protein heavy foods btw. I also really want to keep going as it helps my mental health. TIA.
The best tip I can give you is stay active. Especially after a leg session, take a walk and don’t do it on a Friday arvo where you then sit around all Saturday doing nothing. I train legs on the Monday then I have to be on my legs all week for work, the moment helps push out the lactic acid and stretch the muscles.
Peer reviewed science answer:
Foam Rolling for Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness and Recovery of Dynamic Performance Measures
Conclusions: Foam rolling effectively reduced DOMS and associated decrements in most dynamic performance measures.
A single study with sample size of 8 can hardly be called a science answer.
According to A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Foam Rolling on Performance and Recovery the results across are sometimes contradictory, with no agreed upon mechanical reason for why it should work and heavily tied to the psychological aspect of it.
It can be effective placebo treatment if you believe in it, but won’t actually treat the DOMS.
You can still work out if it’s just DOMS and not a developing injury. I suggest easing into the routine, as time goes on and you start getting into shape DOMS will be less of an issue. Then you can start to push yourself. In the beginning take it a little bit easy, make sure you don’t get hurt, make sure you build that habit and you’ll definitely be able to stick with the new routine.
I feel like a lot of people burn out in a blaze of glory at the beginning because they are so ambitious. So definitely try to be gentle on yourself for the time being
Thank you for this. I’ll do a light workout today and I won’t push it too much.
It’s quite typical when you’re just starting out and do more work than you’re body is used to. It should get better time, the worst thing to do would be to stop moving.
Take it light(er), but keep training and your body will adapt to the workload. There is really no need to start at 100% when starting to workout after a long period of not training, ease into it.
Warm up/down will have no effect on the DOMS though, and eating healthy and sleeping well will only make your DOMS worse as your body’s immune system will have a stronger response to your muscle disruption (which is a good thing).
What I always found best was doing something active but gentle straight after the workout session. If available, a swim is great for this, as it involves the whole body. A proper warm-down with stretches and general movement does the job too, but you need to do it in a complete way.
Andy Galpin has some interesting suggestions to reduce DOMS.
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5-10 minutes of deep breathing after your workout. He says it’s very important to bring your body back to baseline after a tough workout. Spending a few minutes doing 5 second inhale, 5 second exhales will help.
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Compression clothing. Wearing tight fitting clothing on the affected muscles is shown to reduce soreness or limit the duration of DOMS. Not a panacea but can help a little.
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Believe it or not, static stretching a sore muscle can actually exacerbate DOMS. It’s better to do very light exercise to get that muscle moving and circulating blood flow instead. Stretching is important, but maybe do it immediately after a workout or on another day instead.
I still get DOMS when I try a new workout, but I have seen these things improve my recovery around the margins.
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