[00:00:00] Welcome to the OWN IT Podcast with me, Nicole Hollar, where we're gonna to talk about stuff to help you get out of your way, take charge of your life, and, well, other stuff too.
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the OWN IT Podcast with me, Nicole Hollar. I had a great question the other day and that question was, why am I so sore after I work out? And I said, are you sore during your workout too? And, and she's like, well, yeah, but after I, you know, crying when I want to go sit on the toilet or if it's an arm day, if I need to go take that sports bra off There's different kinds of soreness and please don't misunderstand. Soreness is normal, but you should never feel like your joints are shearing off the bone, that it's breaking. If you're really feeling a lot, the elbow is a big one. When people do too heavy bicep curls, they're usually binding really hard and they end up straining sort of the tendons and the connective tissue right at the joints.
And that can apply to really any joint.
[00:01:00] Likewise, if you're doing too dynamic, like say jumping, of motions and you don't have that stability that you really should have in your hips, knees or ankles and feet, you might experience a lot of joint pain there because you didn't have the stability in order to manage the motion.
If, these are the cases, then in the first example, you probably need to have more range of motion and less weight so you're not fighting so hard through the exercise, and using the jumping example, you should probably start doing some more stability work in order to protect those joints when you are doing the motion.
But that's not the kind of soreness we're talking about today. The type of soreness I'm talking about today isn't even that Acute Muscle Soreness that you might experience during the workout. If you were at all a, um, like a high school athlete like me, you've probably done a lot of wall sitting, you know, your back up against the wall, knees,
[00:02:00] 90 degrees, hips at 90 degrees, and you just sit there for endless amounts of time.
'Til your quads are super burning. I remember those were some of my first memories of Acute Muscle Soreness. I'm not talking about that kind of muscle soreness today. What I want to talk about is DOMS, you might have heard, which is Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. And that's something that usually comes within 24 or 48 hours after a workout.
Now, everybody's a little bit different. For me, I'm generally more sore two days after a workout. Some people are more sore one day after a workout. Everybody's body is just a little bit different, but that's the average range. Now, it's really important to understand that there are two main motions
whenever we're doing an activity. The first one is the concentric motion. And that is when that muscle is shortening. I'm going to use a bicep curl as an example because it's one we can all probably
[00:03:00] relate to. When you bring your hand toward your shoulder, that's the concentric part of the exercise because that bicep is shortening.
The eccentric part is when it's elongating. Now if you're using a dumbbell, that will be and you're standing for example, that's going to be when you're lowering the dumbbell toward the floor. When you are resisting the force of gravity, trying to pull you down. If you were using a cable machine in that case, it would be as the plates are coming back together, whatever the position you're in.
So using a dumbbell bicep curl is an example when you're bringing that hand toward your shoulder. That is the concentric or shortening of the muscle. The eccentric is the elongation of the muscle. Now it's known that DOMS is usually most related toward that eccentric or elongation part of the exercise.
When we're doing that, what's
[00:04:00] happening is that's really the time where we're really building a lot of strength. So if you're doing that bicep curl and you pull it up and then you let your arm drop down, I would recommend you make some changes. You always want to control the weight going down, whatever the exercise that you're doing, you're going to notice a lot more later on and tomorrow, and you're going to get so many more results and better results from doing it in that way. So DOMS is most associated with that elongation or the eccentric part of the exercise. And the reason is that it creates micro tears in the muscle as you're lowering the weight, as you're returning and elongating the muscle. Whatever that muscle group may be, depending on the muscle group, of course, that you're working.
And those are the things, those muscle tears, those are how we grow. We tear the muscle and then we rebuild it. And that's essentially
[00:05:00] muscle growth. For everybody who never really realized that, you are in fact creating tears in the muscle and we grow it. When our bones get more dense, they're actually getting a little bit damaged and then becoming more dense over time.
That's actually why running is good, in some ways, for bone density, because it's creating a bounce and an axial pressure, so it's creating a force on the bone, which is causing it to become more dense. So, in the case of muscle, when we hurt it, essentially, we're actually helping it grow. When it's in a, a good, normal, progressive structure.
Now, there's a few reasons that we end up with the DOMS as a result of that elongation. Like I said, those micro tears, because those are signaling the pain receptors that communicate with the brain. So they're saying, Hey, I'm damaged. Pain receptor lights up. Your brain's like, Oh, pain, got it. The calcium and the
[00:06:00] white blood cells that are released into the bloodstream and muscle are causing inflammation as well.
So that's why we always want to do therapeutics in order to help us recover from exercise too. You're going to have, of course, the lactic acid. That is a, is a, that's a normal byproduct of muscle metabolization. You've probably heard those words before, lactic acid. When you are doing activity, please keep in mind that we want to allow the body to remove toxins, like lactic acid.
So say your legs are sore. Don't just lay on the couch for the next three days. Go for a walk, move them around, do some gentle body weight squats, whatever it is just to get the, the body moving, the blood flowing, and allow your muscle groups to flush out those toxins. I'm going to assume that most people want to know how to recover from that delayed onset muscle soreness.
So there's like four or five things I like to recommend. And the
[00:07:00] first one is always, that you want to progress slowly when you graduate in weight. Don't suddenly jump many, many percentages or pounds of weight at a time. If you have a bigger group, sure, jumping 10 pounds for your squat might not be a big deal, but jumping 10 pounds for your bicep curl, is a huge deal because the bicep is obviously not capable of navigating and managing nearly as much weight as the entire lower body.
So you want to progress smartly and slowly, even if that means drop setting, doing fewer reps, and then lowering the weight to continue a few more. That's going to be drop setting. Use a spotter. Whatever it is you need to do as you move up to that slightly increased weight. The next one, and I talk about it pretty much in anything that involves wellness, and that's please drink water.
You want to stay hydrated. Water is so essential in order to keep the body just functioning well. It
[00:08:00] helps with our cognitive ability. It helps with flushing out toxins from the body. It allows cells to communicate. It allows the electrical synapses to jump through so that they can communicate with the body.
You don't want to be beef jerky, so we want to be a nice supple steak. The other thing is that again, you'll hear me mention it all the time. I did a whole thing on it in my book, Feeling Stuck?, I think I had like two full pages on sleep and how to even improve your sleep is that you want to sleep. Sleep is when our body does repair and that includes sleep.
So, we want to progress slowly. You want to make sure you're hydrated. You want to make sure that you're getting good sleep. And then from a therapeutic perspective, I would definitely recommend using a foam roller, yoga balls, like the little therapy balls, as well as massage. I often do workshops and
[00:09:00] seminars with foam rollers, therapy balls, and certainly recommend massage to people.
You don't want to brutalize yourself. Be gentle. You shouldn't feel more than a seven in discomfort if you are using any of those therapeutic modalities. And then you can kind of ease into it over time, whether it's with yourself in the foam roller or with a massage therapist, if they're qualified, they know they shouldn't be diving right in.
They want to warm up the body and ease their way in if you're getting deep tissue. And then finally, and I have this one at home. Use an ice bath. Ice baths are great because they help to constrict the blood vessels, they flush waste from the body, they reduce inflammation, and these are all of the things that are happening after we've worked out.
So an ice bath could be really beneficial for you as well, but I will caution you, if you're new to it, let's not dive into a 40 degree tank, you're going to want to start somewhere in that mid 50s and only go
[00:10:00] for a few minutes and then graduate over time. And I can tell you for myself, I might have one at home, but if I've been on vacation for a couple of weeks, I want to start at that mid 50 range again just to get my body readjusted and then I can happily go down.
I usually stay at around 48 to 50 because I suspect people might be asking me what temperature I stay at, and then I go for about 8 to 10 minutes max. Anyway, that is my advice to anybody who's wondering why they're so sore after a workout. If it's not just extraordinary joint pain and you actually just feel in your muscles, then you've probably done a really great job working the muscle.
So good for you. If you want to help yourself recovery, recover from it. Remember drink water, progress slowly, sleep, use those therapeutic tools like foam roller, the yoga therapy balls massage, as well as an ice bath. If you have any other questions about fitness, wellness,
[00:11:00] whatever it might be, by all means go onto my website.
You can submit a form there under the podcast page with topics you'd like me to discuss. I always want you guys to remember this is your time and you can accomplish really anything that you want. Have an awesome day.
