You can get sore muscles any time you exercise in a new way that your body isn't used to or when you increase the intensity of your workouts. If you're dealing with muscle soreness, we're here to give you a few ways in which you can get rid of the pain ans soreness.
Why do you get sore muscles?
There are two types of muscle soreness: acute and delayed onset.
Acute muscle soreness occurs due to exercising intensely or using a bad form which is an indication enough to stop immediately as it could lead to muscle and joint damage.
Delayed onset muscle soreness sets in 12-14 hours post workouts. It's why you feel sore in the mornings after a workout. These sore muscles last for one to three days and sometimes it can even take ten days to recover completely.
As you workout, your muscle fibres can slightly tear. Those tiny muscle tears lead to hypertrophy which basically means that the muscle cells get bigger. It is when you once let the muscle fibres recover, the muscle ends up getting stronger than before.
You need to make sure you don't work out those muscles before they are completely healed. Trying to perform intense exercises on sore muscles will only result in more pain and injury.
How to get rid of sore muscles:
There's actually no way to speed up the process of healing when it comes to muscle repair. But you can treat or reduce the symptoms of the soreness in a few ways.
You can apply some ice to your muscles. A cold wrap can be applied to your muscles immediately after you exercise or 24 hours later which helps in reducing pain. You can combine this with a massage on your muscles for 10 minutes.
Foam rolling is another technique that you can use where you basically massage your muscles on top of a foam roller to relieve stress and tightness. When it is done post exercising, it decreases muscle pain and in turn improves muscle strength recovery.
You need to completely relax your sore muscles and give it time to heal before you start to exercise again. Light activity is fine, but you need to avoid high intensity workouts till the muscles feel better before they can get stressed again.
Stay hydrated at all times. Dehydration can actually cause 7% higher pain in 24-48 hours post exercising as compared to a hydrated body. If you wish for quicker muscle recovery, it's important to drink lots of water.
Drinking coffee before workouts also works. Ingesting 5 milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of your body weight immediately before a workout can lead to lesser muscle soreness. Just make sure you don't start to get too jittery from the caffeine intake. It is also recommended to have green tea or black tea if coffee doesn't sit right for you.
