Being Sore After A Workout Isn't Always a POSITIVE Result of a Workout

Or, so Mark Rippetoe writes in a recent article.

BULLET POINTS

*Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) is a phenomenon associated with certain types of muscular work. It can occur as the result of exercise or manual labor, and is a perfectly natural consequence of unaccustomed physical exertion. 

*Muscles are the contractile motors that operate the system of levers we call the skeleton. Muscles work by generating “tension,” or pulling force between their attachment points on the bones they operate; they pull on these two points of attachment with varying degrees of force. They generate this pull under three modes of operation:

1. Concentric

2. Eccentric (Negative part of the exercise)

3. Isometric

*As it turns out, eccentric muscular work is the source of muscular soreness. Concentric contractions don’t make you sore, and only poorly controlled isometric contractions (where some lengthening has in fact occurred) produce soreness 

*Soreness is produced by any exercise with an eccentric component, and the muscles that work eccentrically will get sore in a predictable way until they adapt to the work. It doesn’t matter how heavy or light the weight is — if there is enough eccentric volume in the workout to which you are not adapted, you will get sore. This is why 100 bodyweight-only squats (“air” squats) will make you exquisitely sore, and if you do them infrequently enough that you do not adapt to the work, they will make you exquisitely sore every time you do them. In fact, since they weigh essentially nothing, they’re not heavy enough to make you stronger, but the 100 negatives will make you sore enough that you can’t walk correctly for several days. Done twice a week, you’ll stop getting sore, thank God, but you’ll still not get any stronger because you’re not lifting progressively heavier weight.

***Occasional soreness is a normal part of training, but chronic systemic inflammation for weeks, months, or years on end is a very bad thing for your health, essentially the same thing as a disease. Our biology is not designed to function under these circumstances, and it cannot adapt to chronic soreness any more than it can adapt to starvation. 

Read the entire article HERE!! 

In Addition, please read this excellent article on DOMS and Muscle Soreness in the CROSSFIT JOURNAL HERE

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