What causes DOMS and how can it be prevented?

One to two days after training your muscles become tight and sore. Depending on how hard you trained and which muscles were involved it might even be hard to get into your car or walk down the stairs. This phenomenon is known as delayed onset muscle soreness. The goal of physical training is to challenge the muscles to adapt and respond in hypertrophy. However, excessive muscle soreness can be counter productive and discourage you from training. This article discusses the cause of DOMS and how to prevent it.

There is a huge misconception that lactic acid is responsible for DOMS. This of course is not true. Muscle soreness is the results of inflammation that occurs as a result of microscopic tears in muscle fibers. This inflammation is similar to what occurs if you were to sprain your ankle or cut your finger with a knife. Localized swelling occurs where there is tissue damage. The swelling in turns puts pressure on certain neural receptors and signal to the brain that tissue damage has occurred. Your body's response to this stimulus is its way of protecting itself from further damage.

Unfortunately there is no real way to prevent muscle soreness form occurring however there are a few things that can be done to minimize the amount of muscles soreness you experience.

The best way to reduce muscle soreness is to know your limits. If you are new to training best advice is to under train until you build a solid foundation. Experiencing excessive muscle soreness can lead to overtraining. It will also kill your motivation and doesn't guarantee better gains then if you were to train with less intensity but more frequently.

Another way to reduce muscle soreness is by thoroughly warming up the muscles and joints you intend to train. Warming up your joints and muscles increases their elasticity and helps reduce micro tearing during eccentric contraction.

Performing light workouts (half the resistance/intensity as your regular workout) is also another way to reduce muscle soreness and help aid recovery. Low intensity training can be used to pump blood full of nutrients into the sore muscles and help to remove waste materials that accumulated as a result of micro tearing. In fact it is the leaching of intracellular fluid into extracellular space that causes the inflammatory response in the first place.

If you are new to training it is also best to stay away from ballistic exercises. Ballistic exercises increase negative resistance and require forceful eccentric contraction. This in turn results in more tissue damage. Ballistic training should be reserved for experienced athletes.

Lastly, in order to aid in recovery be sure to eat plenty of high quality foods that are high in protein and get plenty of rest. Be sure you don't train these sore muscles again (not including light training) until you have fully recovered from the previous workout. Training sore muscles will lead to overtraining and can results in chronic injury. Best advice is to be patient and pace yourself. Rome wasn’t built in a day and most athletes train form years before realizing their goals.

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