Joslyn's Blog Spot - The day after, the day after!

It happens to us all. You haven't trained in a while, you set foot in the gym, and two days later your sentences are peppered with expletives due to every move you make hurting like hell! Welcome to world of DOMS ladies and gentleman - Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness! It's the whip that cracks the day after, the day after!! You wake up the morning after a workout and feel pretty good, and then the next day BAM...you can't walk!!!

So what are DOMS and why to we get them? The jury remains slightly out on this one but the most recent and most plausible argument suggests DOMS is due to micro-tears we get in our muscles when we train. Just a quick note on muscle breakdown. Tears in the muscle might sound a little traumatic, it's not at all. As we train, our muscle fibres do indeed get micro-tears, but grow back stronger, giving us strength increases. So, essentially our muscles breakdown, and then rebuild. However it's not this breaking down process that causes the pain (as you would obviously feel it whilst you train - erm that's a different type of pain). The soreness we feel are the muscle fibres rebuilding. We can feel DOMS at any point from 24-48 hours after a workout.

The best way to get rid of DOMS is to keep moving unfortunately, increased blood flow to your muscles means reduced time spent walking like ants have infiltrated your pants. Try the following for a little relief:

1. Move more, a 20-40 minute cardio session will increase blood flow to the area and speed up recovery.

2. A hot bath, followed by a good stretch.

3. A massage, also to encourage blood flow to the area.