You are finally starting your new fitness routine that will help you reach your newly created fitness goals. During your first workout back, however, you start to progressively become more and more overwhelmed as a rather severe muscular discomfort sets in. And if that is not punishment enough, you wake up the next morning suffering from some serious muscle soreness. You were expecting some workout pain after your hiatus, but this takes it to a whole new level. Why does exercise hurt?
Exercise is painful because humans did not evolve to engage in regular, purposeful exercise. Rather, we evolved to rest and conserve energy. Exercise also causes a lot of bodily inflammation in the initial workout phase, an effect that is exacerbated with prolonged periods in between workouts.
Why Does Exercise Hurt?
Humans Are Not Designed to Exercise
Although we are wired to be physically active and run, we evolved to conserve energy whenever possible. We are not designed to push ourselves beyond to our limits through purposeful training.
As Daniel Lieberman, evolutionary biologist and professor at Harvard university says: “We have to choose to be active and we never evolved to do that” (source).
This is because up until the modern age, there was more scarcity around resources like food and water. You could simply not afford to waste many additional resources. Resources that could potentially make the difference between life and death for you or members of your community.
Exercise Causes Inflammation
When talking about inflammation within your body, we refer to a cascade of cellular events. Events, which lead to the elimination of damaged compounds within our body (source).
During the early stages of a program, your muscles produce various inflammatory by-products that promote inflammation. It is this inflammation that your body responds to following exercise, which is vital to the adaptive responses of exercise (source).
As your body gets used to exercise, it becomes less inflammatory and more tolerable.
Prolonged Periods of Immobility
Workouts are even more painful following prolonged immobility. This is because when we take a break, our muscles and heart adapt to this new state.
Your body adapts this way to not waste any precious energy to keep those strong muscles alive. Once you start back up again, your muscles and heart are simply not conditioned to the exposed stressors.
The good news is that your body is highly adaptable to new environments, particularly when exposed to it regularly.
This is the reason why over time, your workouts will become less painful and significantly more enjoyable. There will be less sore muscles the day following and intense exercise will be more bearable (source). Eventually, they can provide you with a great source of pleasure.
Those three reasons are the primary causes of why exercise causes pain. In addition to the above-mentioned reasons, you could also argue that exercise pain is simply part of the natural selection process.
Those that were able to push through the pain of a physical challenge have a tendency to be stronger and healthier than other members in the community. Subsequently, those individuals had greater likelihoods of survival compared to individuals that were unable to push themselves through that physical pain.
Decreasing Workout Pain
If you want to get to know some effective methods to decrease acute pain during a tough workout, try out some of these following strategies.
Workout Preparation
- Baking Soda. You can decrease the acidity level of your blood through baking soda. Baking soda counteracts the effects of the lactic acid buildup (which increases blood acidity) in your muscles (source). To read more about the surprising effects that baking soda can have on workout soreness, check out this article.
- Adequate Hydration. By managing your hydration status prior to working out you can neutralize your blood’s acidity level. This can make your workout experience more tolerable and less painful (source). Are you wondering about your unique hydration needs? Check out this article.
- Avoid Fat and Sugar. Fatty and sugary foods can leave you feeling full and sluggish and has shown to negatively affect exercise performance (source). They can be a lot for your body to handle, as they take longer to process in your digestive tract (source). Instead, go for a snack rich in carbohydrates about 60 minutes before your workout to increase energy and keep a clear mind.
- Caffeine. Ingesting a caffeinated beverage 30-60 minutes before your workout can decrease the intensity of your pain experience, enhance your energy levels and also improve your overall athletic performance (source). It can help you push through the painful parts of the workout. Additionally, it can enhance the feelings of the exercise high as a reward for exercising. Want to learn more about how caffeine can enhance your workout experience and promote an exercise high? Then check out this article.
During Your Workout
- Keep your Workout to 15 Minutes. Keep your workout limited to 15 minutes for at least the first 3-4 sessions back. This will help to gradually get your body used to exercise. Commonly, individuals perceive significant workout pain by starting out their workout program too intensely. Whether it is a new weight training or aerobic exercise regime, we often tend to lack the patience to return back gradually. By decreasing your workout time, you are less likely to experience significant amounts of workout pain. This will help to get your body and mind used to the stress of physical exercise, as well as increase your chances of sticking with it in the long-term.
- Work Out in Cold Weather. Working out in the cold can make an intense workout more tolerable primarily. The cold can numb body parts that are exposed to the cold (source). Try going for a jog at night and see the effects it has on your pain tolerance yourself. If you do not live in a cold area, try cold water or an ice bath before exercising to see the beneficial effects for yourself. Check out my article on how to effectively achieve a runner’s high by running in cold weather.
- Recruit a Fitness Buddy. Working out in groups or with a close friend can help to make exercise more tolerable. In addition, it can increase your workout satisfaction. It is the best way to provide you with additional motivation, greater self-confidence, and a heightened sense of accountability.
- Gamify Your Workout. Have you ever tried turning your fitness program into a game? This can make your workout more fun, increase long-term motivation and make it more rewarding when you are all finished (source). Have a read through my article on fitness gamification for more information.
Following Your Workout
- Rest Days. Ensure to include a sufficient amount of rest days in between your exercise sessions. As a general rule, do not participate in any purposeful exercise if a muscle group is still store to touch or painful to move. A further way to track your recovery status is to monitor your heart rate in the morning (source). Take note of any changes and decrease activity if your resting heart rate goes 6-10 beats above your resting heart rate (source).
What is Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness?
You may have come across the term Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) in the past. DOMS refers to the muscle soreness that you can feel as a result of strenuous muscle use. It is caused by eccentric muscle contractions (i.e. when the muscle lengthens under load). DOMS tends to start around 24 hours following exercise and peaks between 24-72 hours.
DOMS is typically worst during the initial stage of starting a workout routine. Where some individuals find that the associated muscle pain is worst the next day following their workouts, others find that the pain peaks on the second day of recovery.
What Causes DOMS?
During your workout your muscle suffers microscopic damage from undergoing repetitive strain. As a result, waste products, fluids and other bodily chemicals are sent to the site of microscopic injury. It is the accumulation of fluids placing added pressure on your muscle, which results in the painful experience of DOMS.
Many individuals seek the feelings of DOMS associated with strenuous exercise to make them feel that they have had a good workout. They feel that it is the body’s way of telling them that they have performed a workout that will translate into greater muscle growth.
This is a common thought. However, research shows that you should not rely on the feelings of DOMS to know that you have had a good workout (source).
Signs and Symptoms of DOMS (source)
- Sudden, sharp pain with physical activity and daily activities.
- Pain with localized pressure.
- Muscle swelling
- Decreased muscle strength and endurance
- Pain following prolonged rest periods. This tends to occur because when you are inactive, your blood flow decreases. As your blood flow decreases, it ceases to flush out any by-products and fluids responsible for the pain. In addition, your muscles tighten up when they are not active. Suddenly increasing their length by moving them results in pain.
The effects of DOMS are not dangerous, but can leave you less functional for a few days, particularly if it has been a while since your last workout.
Severe Pain
Are you experiencing pain following your workout that is not consistent with the above signs and symptoms? Then I recommend that you seek help from your local physical therapist or doctor. They will be able to identify the true cause of your pain and be able to help you experience less pain in your future workout sessions.
5 Ways to Relieve Muscle Soreness
Light Exercise
By performing light movement or light aerobic exercise you can decrease your overall recovery time. Examples include walking, performing active range of motion exercises.
Increasing your heart rate when your muscles are sore can help to flush out the some of the by-products that accumulate in your muscle and are responsible for the delayed onset of muscle soreness (source).
Take a Warm Bath
A warm bath can be a good way or relieving the acute soreness from severe DOMS. Warmth helps to open up your blood vessels and flush out by-products accumulating in your muscles. This effect is even more pronounced when taking Epsom salt baths (source).
Muscle Stretching & Foam Rolling
Gentle static stretching and using a foam roller can lengthen your muscle fibers. This will help to decrease muscle knots that build up. Subsequently, this can lessen the local fluid build-up and disperse it throughout greater amounts of muscle tissue.
Get a Massage
Massage therapy is an effective method of decreasing your muscle pain and tension that builds up after a workout session. Even though it can be painful in the moment, it will make you feel great afterwards.
Receiving a massage has also been shown to increase your brain’s endorphin production (source).
Seek Help from your Physical Therapist
If you are suffering from significant levels of muscle soreness following your workouts that leave you close to incapacitated, it may be worth checking in with your physical therapist.
Your local physical therapist can help to decrease your muscle soreness by performing gentle soft tissue release techniques, provide you with active recovery exercises, as well as help to decrease your pain levels through modalities.
Furthermore, they will be able to identify whether or not you are suffering from something more serious than DOMS or not.
Exercise High
Have you ever experienced the “exercise high” following an intense workout session? I am referring to the intoxicating feeling of pleasure combined with deep relaxation and absence of worries?
Here at Endorphun we focus exactly on that. We believe that by consistently experiencing that exercise high, your mental health will start to flourish. We believe that we will become an overall much happier person.
Try it out for yourself. Sign up for my Newsletter today for monthly updates on how to effectively achieve your exercise high.
Conclusion
Whether you experience it during your workout or afterwards, workout pain can be difficult to deal with. There are a few reasons that we experience workout-related pain.
The pain tends to be greater during initial phases of a new workout program. This is because initially, exercise tends to cause more bodily inflammation. That can make it more difficult to push through and result in more severe feelings of muscle soreness.
Additionally, humans evolved to rest and conserve energy whenever possible instead of engaging in purposeful exercise. Good news is that your body is great at adapting and as a result, exercise tends to hurt less the more you perform it.
Next time, try to decrease your workout time. Add dietary supplements and have an adequate pre-workout nutrition. Additionally, try to make your workout more fun, meaningful and engaging in order to improve your tolerance.
Are you ready to say good-bye to your workout pain?