Greetings Wellness Friends, I hope life has been treating you well. Over the past month, I’ve encountered people who have performed exercise with the “no pain, no gain” mentality. Although many individuals feel that it’s considered a good work out only if they achieve soreness anywhere between the end of their workout to a few days after.
I hate to spoil it for you all, but this is unfortunately a common misconception. Here’s why: Our bodies tend to follow the General Adaption Syndrome or (GAS).When introducing a new stressor, like an exercise, our body will become stimulated. The body will respond in two ways: If it meets the correct stimulation and threshold, your muscles will get stronger and bigger or become more “toned." However, if the stress is too much, it goes into the exhaustion phase and leads to breakdown.
Soreness is our body’s response that our muscles are breaking down and trying to recover. It also means you likely have an inflammatory process (much like a blunt injury) that creates a little or a lot of swelling in the area. Swelling has been shown to deactivate important muslces for stabilization of moving joints. If it persists for a couple days after, it is called Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness or DOMS. In simple terms, if you don’t give yourself adequate rest and continue to break down too much of your muscle cells, this will eventually lead to injuries or the compensations of wrong muscle groups. If you are experiencing soreness, remember to ice several times a day, on and off for 20 minutes.
What’s that mean? If you trying to rehabilitate your shoulder with the mindset that you need to be sore in order to be working out correctly, you will likely see little or no progress. Make sure you seek advice for recommended program from a fitness or health expert who can design you a program tailored for your level of fitness or rehab.
And if you are seeing a professional that promotes this…find someone else.
Wishing you a fun-filled and healthy day,
Justin
See you back soon!