Muscle soreness and stiffness: Causes and remedy
Learn what you can do to prevent muscle soreness and stiffness, and if you are experiencing sore muscles, what you can do to cure muscle soreness.
What is muscle soreness?
Following a long period without exercise, most of us have felt soreness and stiffness in the exercised joints and muscles.
A temporary soreness may persist for several hours immediately after doing exercise that you are not accustomed doing, but soreness could also set in a couple of hours or a day after exercising and last for 3 or 4 days.
The latter is called delayed onset muscle soreness or DOMS.
Possible causes for muscle soreness
Any one of the following factors may cause muscle soreness:
- Small tears in the muscle tissue itself or damage to its components which are responsible for muscle contraction.
- Muscle spasms.
- Overstretching or tearing of portions of the muscle’s connective tissue.
- Acute inflammation.
- A combination of all of the above.
How to avoid or cure muscle soreness
To avoid muscle soreness
- Start out slowly on any exercise program
If you haven’t been exercising for a long time, slowly ease into your new exercise program. Perform light exercises at first and slowly build up the amount of exercise and the amount of stress you put on your muscles. - Get on a regular exercise schedule
Maintain a regular exercise schedule. Exercise at least 3 times a week for 20 minutes at a time and spread those exercise sessions out over the entire week. You could exercise for example on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
To cure muscle soreness
- Warm up and stretch your muscles
If you are experiencing muscle soreness, perform very light exercises to stay mobile and do not overload the muscles anymore until they recover. And after you do a light warm-up, stretch the muscles. - Keep your muscles warm
Apply heat to the affected muscles by using for example a hot water bottle. - Rest your muscles
While resting your muscles is vital to recovering from muscle soreness, you must ensure that you don’t become totally immobile.
So start out slowly, warm up and stretch, stay active, and rest your muscles for recovery after exercise. This way you’ll avoid getting sore muscles or at least minimize the effects and pain of muscle soreness.
