True or False?
If you don’t experience the following symptoms after training, it was a wasted workout?
- Crippling DOMS
- Inability to go down the stairs after your leg session.
- Your muscles feel like they’re about to explode with lactic acid build up.
- You can't sleep because the ache in your muscles is so severe.
I used to think that if I didn’t train my legs to the point at which I couldn’t walk the next day or if I wasn’t dripping with sweat and feeling sick at the end of my workout, that I'd failed. That the session was a waste, I wasn’t going to see any progress and I may as well have stayed at home.
Silly, silly me.
DOMS, or delayed onset of muscle soreness, is the term used to describe soreness felt as a result of the exercise you do. If you’ve ever felt like you’ve been hit by a bus the day after a really hard session or that you can’t wash your hair the day after you’ve trained your arms, chances are this is the phenomenon you’re experiencing.
Now whilst muscle damage is a key component of growing muscles [along with metabolic stress & tension], it is important to remember that there is limited proof in scientific research, proving that muscle soreness alone is a good way to indicate muscle damage/growth. There is in fact a poor link between muscle soreness speed of muscular hypertrophy [growth].
If your only goal is to feel sore the next day, you’re probably chasing the wrong goals and exercising for the wrong reason. In addition, people have very different fitness goals and aren’t solely looking to grow muscle mass. No point in being unable to lift your arms if you’re looking to become more flexible and able to move through range of motion better, now is there? If you go ham in the gym or start lifting silly weights just to chase that burn and ache, chances are you’re going to affect the sessions you have planned for the rest of the week or injure yourself. Not a smart move. After all, overall metabolic stress and fatigue are largely determined and encouraged by volume and intensity, both of which can't be achieved if you're unable to train due to DOM's. There is also the chance that the DOM's and aches you experience the day after a big session/workout, is in fact a number of other things, not always positive;
- Over strain felt by the muscles as you have trained them too hard. Or in some cases injury.
- You have moved in a way that your muscles are not used to and trained muscles that otherwise you don't normally hit.
- You lifted with incorrect form and have strained the muscle. - Poor muscular endurance or low training frequency on a certain muscle group. This means that, that 'one massive leg session a week' is leaving you sore not because you've trained well, but the muscles are under trained and not used to the volume and intensity.
-You're not allowing for sufficient recovery.
- Your flexibility, mobility and range of motion is not sufficient or trained enough to handle the movements you are attempting.
Measuring workout success, should and come from a variety of different things, but muscle soreness should not be one of them. As long as you are seeing progress in your sessions and your exercise movement patterns are improving and you’re recovering properly, these are far better indicators of overall progress!
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