Why do your muscles hurt more 2 days after you first work out rather than the day after?
I worked out on wed with muscles that i haven't used in a while. Thursday, i was actually fine.
today, i'm sore. what's the deal with that?
Why do your muscles hurt more 2 days after you first work out rather than the day after?
I worked out on wed with muscles that i haven't used in a while. Thursday, i was actually fine.
today, i'm sore. what's the deal with that?
That is normal. Exercise actually damages the muscles causing small tears and when they repair, that is when they become stronger. I can't give you a medical reason why you feel it more on the second day, but it will start to ease after that. I think the swelling peaks after about 48 hours. Try stretching the muscles- that can help. Hot water can feel good on them too. The more you exercise, the less you will encounter this.
Last edited by zippyjuan; 03-30-2007 at 01:37 PM.
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Whenever you engage in an unusual level of physical activity, whether lifting weights, going for a jog, or simply moving a heavy piece of furniture you create microscopic tears in your muscle tissue. When your body rebuilds the damaged muscle it grows back bigger and stronger than before.
As a general rule, the more you exert yourself, the more microscopic tears you create, and the more soreness you feel later on as the muscles are being repaired by your body. The soreness itself is a result of both the damage to the muscles, and chemical waste products produced by the muscles during use (namely lactic acid).
This is why you should stretch before and after a workout as it helps to get the acid out of the muscle.
Your body doesn't have a 24 hour clock.it runs on its own time.
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you can also make sure your intake of potassium is good. bananas. meat. etc. they help reduce the lactic acid.
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It doesn't always happen for me. When it does, it's usually because I either didn't get enough sleep on the first night or didn't stretch the soreness out on the first day, leading to a buildup of lactic acid on the second.
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It is fallacy that muscles are in some way 'damaged' during a workout and it is through this damage that additional muscle is grown in reponse. Your muscles become exhausted during lifting because you've outstripped your body's capacity to continue fueling the muscle with new energy, as existing reserves inside the muscle get used up. Repeated use of muscles increases the coordination of muscle fibers and increases the coordination of nerve signals from the brain. This results in improved subconcious and conscious "muscle awareness," an increase in ability to focus and trigger a higher percentage of muscle fibers in the muscle at one time. And of course, repeated muscle work coupled with proper diet and rest will result in additional muscle growth to adapt to the increase in workload.Originally Posted by zippyjuan
Muscle soreness is caused by lactic acid, which gets generated in the muscle when muscle cells must respirate anaerobically because oxygen reserves are used up. When you're out of shape, your muscles go into oxygen debt much more quickly and the amount of acid produce as a result becomes significant. If you're feeling it more the second day, its because there's more than can be flushed out in 1 day, and its probably spread throughout the muscle and surrounding areas more. Once your into the second day, the best thing for it ironically is to work out the sore muscles again. A good workout now will increase blood flow through the muscles and help flush the acid away more quickly.
Last edited by zenbooty; 03-31-2007 at 04:26 PM.
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thanks zen. I think that makes sense as to why it might hurt more on the second day than the first. So, as an experiment... if i were able to hook myself up to an oxygen tank for 20 minutes or so, would that help relieve soreness? more O2 to body = more O2 going to my muscles...
No that's not how it works. When oxygen runs out during the exercise, the muscle cells respond by generating energy chemically without oxygen, which gives off lactic acid as a side product. Once the acid is generated, an influx of oxygen later will not make it go away, it will just halt further production of acid. Only time will dissipate the lactic acid once its there, or like I said, exercise helps.
Common sense is what tells you the Earth is flat.
Look here for some exercise info:
www.exrx.net
I read a fascinating article in Wired a couple of months ago about a heating/cooling device that supposedly helps fatigued muscles recover faster. Their contention is that it's not a lack of oxygen that causes exhaustion, but rather the overheating of the muscles.
They have a prototype glove device that seems to dramatically increase the stamina of people who are pushing their bodies to the limit. They put this device on like gloves, and it creates suction to bring blood to the hands where it's cooled off quickly. After a short session with this, people who have 'hit the wall' are able to go right back & continue with their heavy exercise. They describe it as similar to putting a truck radiator on a small car. Interestingly, it seems to work in reverse as well - they immersed someone in freezing cold water, and while wearing a similar device that heated rather than cooled the blood, they were able to stay in much longer than someone without such a device.
I wish I could find the article - I can't remember the title, but I'll see if I can dig it up somewhere.
What Is the Treatment for DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness)?
* Wait. Soreness will go away in 3 to 7 days with no special treatment.
* Avoid any vigorous activity that increases pain.
* Do some easy low-impact aerobic exercise - this will increase blood flow to the affected muscles, which may help diminish soreness.
* Use the R.I.C.E. treatment plan
* Use gentle stretching on the affected area
* Gently massage the affected muscles,
* Try using a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications to reduce the soreness temporarily, though they won't actually speed healing.
* There is some evidence that performing Yoga may reduce DOMS.
* Allow the soreness to subside thoroughly before performing any vigorous exercise.
* Don't forget to stretch and warm up before your targeted activity.
* ** If your pain persists longer than about 7 days or increases despite these measures, consult your physician.
* Learn something from the experience! Use prevention first.
Can I Prevent Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness?
While DOMS is common and annoying, it is not a necessary part of getting into shape. There are many things you can do to prevent, avoid and shorten DOMS. Here are a few tips:
* Warm up thoroughly before activity
* Cool down completely after exercise
* Perform easy stretching before
* Perform thorough flexibility exercises after exercise, while the muscles are warm
* Start with easy to moderate activity and build up your intensity over time
* Avoid making sudden major changes in the type of exercise you do
* Avoid making sudden major changes in the amount of time that you exercise
http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/injuries/a/doms.htm
Supplimental oxygen would help if the blood oxygen level had dropped, but that's generally not the case. The blood still has plenty of oxygen in it, but during strenuous exercise that oxygen doesn't reach deep into the muscle quick enough to replace the O2 which is being used up, and that's when the muscles switch to anaerobic respiration (which leads to lactic acid production). So although the muscles are running short of O2, it's a problem of delivery rather than availability. Blood still has a good supply of oxygen but it isn't getting to where it needs to be, and breathing more O2 won't help.
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well then i guess i depleted my o2 running up and down stairs moving my future roommate from a 3rd floor walk up to a 2nd floor walk up.
Am I alone here? Is that it?
Am I the only one who sees.
Maybe we can learn to be just like him.
Wear a little uniform.
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In that instance increasing the O2 concentration of the air you're breathing should help you get your wind back if you're short of breath. But it won't do much, if anything, to help or prevent muscle soreness.
There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. - Friedrich Hayek
after a few weeks of working out, your muscle will be use to it...good luck man! working out is good for you!
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/he...rssnyt&emc=rss
Lactic Acid Is Not Muscles' Foe, It's Fuel
Article Tools Sponsored By
By GINA KOLATA
Published: May 16, 2006
Everyone who has even thought about exercising has heard the warnings about lactic acid. It builds up in your muscles. It is what makes your muscles burn. Its buildup is what makes your muscles tire and give out.
Coaches and personal trainers tell athletes and exercisers that they have to learn to work out at just below their "lactic threshold," that point of diminishing returns when lactic acid starts to accumulate. Some athletes even have blood tests to find their personal lactic thresholds.
But that, it turns out, is all wrong. Lactic acid is actually a fuel, not a caustic waste product. Muscles make it deliberately, producing it from glucose, and they burn it to obtain energy. The reason trained athletes can perform so hard and so long is because their intense training causes their muscles to adapt so they more readily and efficiently absorb lactic acid.
The notion that lactic acid was bad took hold more than a century ago, said George A. Brooks, a professor in the department of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley. It stuck because it seemed to make so much sense.
"It's one of the classic mistakes in the history of science," Dr. Brooks said.
Its origins lie in a study by a Nobel laureate, Otto Meyerhof, who in the early years of the 20th century cut a frog in half and put its bottom half in a jar. The frog's muscles had no circulation — no source of oxygen or energy.
Dr. Myerhoff gave the frog's leg electric shocks to make the muscles contract, but after a few twitches, the muscles stopped moving. Then, when Dr. Myerhoff examined the muscles, he discovered that they were bathed in lactic acid.
A theory was born. Lack of oxygen to muscles leads to lactic acid, leads to fatigue.
Athletes were told that they should spend most of their effort exercising aerobically, using glucose as a fuel. If they tried to spend too much time exercising harder, in the anaerobic zone, they were told, they would pay a price, that lactic acid would accumulate in the muscles, forcing them to stop.
Few scientists questioned this view, Dr. Brooks said. But, he said, he became interested in it in the 1960's, when he was running track at Queens College and his coach told him that his performance was limited by a buildup of lactic acid.
When he graduated and began working on a Ph.D. in exercise physiology, he decided to study the lactic acid hypothesis for his dissertation.
"I gave rats radioactive lactic acid, and I found that they burned it faster than anything else I could give them," Dr. Brooks said.
It looked as if lactic acid was there for a reason. It was a source of energy.
Dr. Brooks said he published the finding in the late 70's. Other researchers challenged him at meetings and in print.
"I had huge fights, I had terrible trouble getting my grants funded, I had my papers rejected," Dr. Brooks recalled. But he soldiered on, conducting more elaborate studies with rats and, years later, moving on to humans. Every time, with every study, his results were consistent with his radical idea.
Eventually, other researchers confirmed the work. And gradually, the thinking among exercise physiologists began to change.
"The evidence has continued to mount," said L. Bruce Gladden, a professor of health and human performance at Auburn University. "It became clear that it is not so simple as to say, Lactic acid is a bad thing and it causes fatigue."
As for the idea that lactic acid causes muscle soreness, Dr. Gladden said, that never made sense.
"Lactic acid will be gone from your muscles within an hour of exercise," he said. "You get sore one to three days later. The time frame is not consistent, and the mechanisms have not been found."
The understanding now is that muscle cells convert glucose or glycogen to lactic acid. The lactic acid is taken up and used as a fuel by mitochondria, the energy factories in muscle cells.
Mitochondria even have a special transporter protein to move the substance into them, Dr. Brooks found. Intense training makes a difference, he said, because it can make double the mitochondrial mass.
It is clear that the old lactic acid theory cannot explain what is happening to muscles, Dr. Brooks and others said.
Yet, Dr. Brooks said, even though coaches often believed in the myth of the lactic acid threshold, they ended up training athletes in the best way possible to increase their mitochondria. "Coaches have understood things the scientists didn't," he said.
Through trial and error, coaches learned that athletic performance improved when athletes worked on endurance, running longer and longer distances, for example.
That, it turns out, increased the mass of their muscle mitochondria, letting them burn more lactic acid and allowing the muscles to work harder and longer.
Just before a race, coaches often tell athletes to train very hard in brief spurts.
That extra stress increases the mitochondria mass even more, Dr. Brooks said, and is the reason for improved performance.
And the scientists?
They took much longer to figure it out.
"They said, 'You're anaerobic, you need more oxygen,' " Dr. Brooks said. "The scientists were stuck in 1920."
well...it's a fuel but you muscles can only burn so much. that's why athletes are always trying to increase their LT (lactic threshold). believe me, you spend very much time above your LT, there's no recovering. you can have bursts above your LT but you really want to watch it during a race. mine is at about 89-91% of my MHR. i can race all day w/a hr of 183bpm. if i'm up at 188-192...boom. thankfully, i'm usually at 173ish.
70% of the world is covered by water. The rest is covered by Bob Sanders
Interesting. Biochem is my thing but I'm not familiar with that theory. Will have to investigate. Thanks for info!
There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. - Friedrich Hayek
The point is, lactic acid does not CAUSE muscle soreness. The article states that in practice we've been doing it right, but the theory behind it is wrong.
When you approach the so called "lactic threshold," your body switches to a new mode of energy delivery by creating lactic acid in the muscle area for direct absorption. You are pushing yourself beyond your normal the limits if that happens.
Muscle soreness happens because you have pushed yourself beyond, and lactic acid is only an indicater that you have done so. Note that lactic acid is pretty much used up immediately. It certainly does not last for 3 days.
All of this is perfectly consistent with your description.
No problem.
I read this article also, very interesting article. It was the March 2007 [15.03] Issue of Wired, Building the 21st century soldier was the name of the article.
That's the one! Thanks, bro. Apparently it's not available online, but if anyone gets the chance to grab that issue, it's a fascinating read.
Wow, really interesting discussion. I'm intrigued by the article on lactic acid formation and whatnot.
I don't buy the idea that it's overheating that causes muscle soreness or an exercise point. There are plenty of times that I've exercised in colder weather and hit the same limits as when warmer. I could be wrong on this, of course, but I just can't think to when I've experienced it as such.
Apparently it has little to do with the external temp & more to do with the temp of your blood/muscles. So they invented this device to quickly warm/cool your blood, which significantly improved endurance & decreased recovery time.
Ah, I looked up the article, and yeah I'd read it before, but I guess I forgot the details. That makes sense now. Ok. I withdraw my opinion in favor of letting people who know better figure things out some more.
I've heard the US military is also funding research for somewhat similar devices for wounded soldiers. The idea is based on the idea of cryogenics... they have prototypes that circulate blood through a type of cooler in order to lower the body temperature dramatically and preserve the injured person during transport to receive medical care. The idea supposedly works quite well, but the problem is that such devices are far too large for medics to carry around with them. They require something like 40 gallons of coolant (or maybe it was 40 pounds, I dunno). Another major problem is that the coolant leaks out of shot-up bodies. Currently they've been putting people in body bags full of ice packs (leaving the head portion unzipped, of course).
There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. - Friedrich Hayek
I think I remember seeing a documentary on this. It was called "Universal Soldier 2" featuring commentary by Van Damne
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