How many days do muscles hurt after a leg workout. Why do muscles hurt after a workout. Gym

Who among us has not experienced muscle pain after fitness? It seems that such people simply do not exist. Why muscles hurt after fitness and what can be done to reduce pain, we will now discuss.

Reasons why muscles hurt after exercise

After fitness, the muscles almost always hurt, however, there are two types of pain.

The first type: a rather pleasant burning sensation immediately after a workout indicates that the lesson was successful. The second type of pain is pain that occurs the next day. Let's figure out what's what.

First type of muscle pain

Immediately after fitness, the muscles hurt, because playing sports is accompanied by some chemical processes that occur in the body. During physical activity, glucose breaks down into the "energy fuel" pyruvate and into lactic acid. The latter substance accumulates in the muscles, and the more intense the training was, the more it becomes. It is lactic acid that causes a burning sensation, similar to muscle pain. After class, due to blood circulation, lactic acid is gradually washed out of the muscles, which means that the pain subsides, usually it takes no more than 20 hours.

The second type of muscle pain after fitness

During training, ruptures of short muscle fibers of myofibrils occur, and, most surprisingly, they are torn during moments of relaxation in sports. That is, when, after an intense load, for example, lifting the barbell, the athlete lowers it. After training, myofibrils begin to recover, and this process is painful. Usually, after a few days, muscle pain caused by fitness itself disappears, and with regular training, pain ceases to occur at all.

Injuries can cause muscle pain after exercise

Separately, muscle pain after fitness associated with injuries can be attributed. Usually, such pain lasts for a long time, is more intense, and a hematoma or swelling may form at the site of injury. In most cases, over time, the injury heals itself, however, sometimes quite serious treatment and specialist consultations are required.

How to get rid of muscle pain after training?

Only the right approach to exercise, a gradual increase in stress and the elimination of long breaks between fitness classes will help get rid of muscle pain after fitness. However, the pain can be reduced and made less long. To do this, we need to accelerate the removal of lactic acid from the muscles. The sport will help. After training, do active swings with your arms and legs, or work out for 15 minutes on a treadmill. But choose a quick step, not a run. To even better speed up blood circulation, and therefore remove lactic acid from the muscles, visit the sauna, and also take a contrast shower.

You can also do self-massage, grind and warm up the muscles that hurt after fitness. Also in stores sports nutrition and inventory, you can purchase drugs that are aimed at reducing muscle pain after fitness. Some drugs should be taken orally before training, others after. If the muscles after fitness hurt no matter what, and the pain is strong enough, however, it is definitely not associated with injuries, you can use cooling or warming patches. These patches are also sold in fitness stores, they should be stuck on the skin on a sore spot, after a while the pain dulls and decreases.

If you have recently started playing sports, then muscle pain after fitness is expected and normal. Talk to your trainer, maybe he will tell you a more gentle training regimen.

You are very tired after a hard workout. You increased the load or decided to diversify your activities by adding a new exercise. You will feel fine until you wake up the next morning barely able to move.

Meet the krepatura, which athletes and fitness enthusiasts proudly wear!

• Muscle pain after training: myths vs. facts

Why do muscles hurt after a workout?

Krepatura (or delayed muscle pain syndrome) is muscle soreness that appears 6-8 hours after exercise and reaches a maximum after about 24-48 hours. The intensity of symptoms decreases after 72 hours, but the time intervals and manifestations may vary in different people.

The main cause of muscle soreness is eccentric muscle contractions, because they create a pronounced load on the muscles..

Krepatura is most pronounced when you change something in the training program (add the new kind exercises, increase the intensity or volume of sets) or if you are new to the sport in general. Your body begins to adapt to prepare your muscles for the same load in the future. That is why, when you first find yourself in the gym and doing squats or lunges with a weight of 5-7 kg, you need to be prepared for the fact that the next day the muscles can hurt a lot. If you keep exercising despite the pain, your muscles will adjust and the discomfort will go away.

Pain can be caused by all types of muscle contractions, but eccentric contractions, in which the muscle lengthens, lead to crepitus most often. This type of contraction is observed while running downhill, when lowering the weight, at the bottom of the squat. There is evidence that some exercises lead to more intense soreness in the muscles of the upper body than in the lower.

Muscle discomfort is the most common characteristic of delayed muscle pain syndrome, but there are other symptoms. According to the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), there is also a decrease in range of motion, swelling, local soreness, and a decrease in muscle strength. Symptoms appear gradually after exercise (not to be confused with acute pain that may occur during training!).

Muscle pain after training: myths vs. facts

Everyone goes through muscle pain. accumulation of lactic acid. An indicator of muscle growth. All these phrases are associated with krepatura. Do you think you know everything about the state when every movement is painful? You will be surprised to know what is actually going on in your body.

Myth #1: Crepatura is linked to the accumulation of lactic acid in the muscles.

This is not true. During exercise your body needs energy, and for that, certain molecules are broken down. As a result of this process, the internal environment of the cells becomes more acidic. Your feeling at this moment is as if the muscles are on fire. But it's not caused by lactate. Lactate is a by-product of the metabolic process that acts as a buffer and slows down the rate of acidification of cells. Lactate is constantly synthesized in the body, even at rest. It levels the acid-base balance within 30-60 minutes after physical activity.

A study published in the journal Clinics in Sports Medicine shows that DOMS is the result of microtrauma to the muscles and surrounding connective tissues, leading to inflammation. The reason why an eccentric contraction is more likely to lead to DOMS (eg, extension of the arm with a clamped dumbbell), ? this is a higher load on the muscles compared to concentric contraction. This is the active lengthening of muscle fibers under load. Imagine pulling on a rope with such force that it begins to crack and tear.

Myth #2: If your muscles don't hurt after a workout, you haven't trained well.

Should muscles hurt after a workout? We are often proud of our strength and believe that if the muscles do not hurt after a workout, then we rocked badly. But it's not.

If your muscles do not hurt the next day after a workout, this does not mean that you have not trained well..

You may feel soreness in your muscles from 24 hours to three days after your workout. If three days later you try the same exercise and you can't because your muscles are simply unable to contract, then you've overtrained.

According to studies that used a scale of 0 to 10 to assess the intensity of pain, pain is weakly correlated with muscle growth and is not an indicator of their adaptation to stress. Why don't my muscles hurt after a workout? There are many factors that affect how krepatura manifests itself in different people. The difference can be significant not only among genetically close people, but also among highly qualified athletes. Thus, muscle strength is just part of the process, and it's not the best indicator of how effective your workouts are.

Myth #3: The more exercised you are, the less susceptible you are to DOMS.

What to do so that the muscles do not hurt after a workout? You feel less pain when your body adapts to training and learns to more effectively distribute the load between muscle fibers. That's why it's important to change your workout routine regularly.

However, there is also a genetic component that is responsible for sensitivity to pain and soreness. People are divided into three types: insensitive, slightly sensitive and highly sensitive. If you are highly sensitive, then under the same load you will experience krepatura more acutely than other people. And since you can't change your genes, it's important to know what type you are in order to understand how your body reacts to changes in your training program.

Myth #4: Muscle damage is bad.

Yes, krepatura is a manifestation of microtrauma of muscle fibers, but it cannot be considered a marker of muscle damage. A certain degree of microtrauma is necessary. When muscles recover, they become bigger and stronger than before. Although these mechanisms are not well understood, damage is thought to stimulate muscle protein synthesis and muscle growth.

Myth #5: Stretching before and after a workout is a good way to prevent muscle soreness after a workout.

Unfortunately no. A review of studies in the Cochrane Database on the effect of stretching before or after exercise on the development of delayed muscle soreness found that it had no effect on soreness in healthy adults. Indeed, studies have shown that static stretching before physical activity does not protect against injury and may even reduce muscle strength.

Research shows that static stretch before training does not protect against injury.

Since it is impossible to avoid soreness in general, you should gradually "enter" new exercises, giving the muscles time to adapt and recover. Each workout should include a warm-up (including dynamic stretching) and relaxation exercises.

What to do if your muscles hurt after a workout?

There are several ways to help get rid of delayed muscle pain syndrome. Sports massage is one of the better ways. Under the influence of massage, the intercellular fluid and blood move through the body, and this speeds up recovery after microtraumas. A study published in the Journal of Exercise Rehabilitation shows that massage improves mobility and helps relieve post-workout pain.

What to do so that muscles do not hurt after training:

• use of foam rollers
• contrast shower (alternating hot and cold water)
• salt baths
• increased protein intake (increases muscle fiber synthesis)
• omega-3 supplements (reduce inflammation)

The Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine suggests saffron supplements can also help relieve symptoms of crepitus. Regardless of your preferences, it's worth thinking about your diet and consuming enough nutrients to help your body recover. Choose a diet that will help you feel better.

When it's more than just post-workout pain

Sometimes you overdo exercise and feel bad. Really bad. But how do you know when it's not just krepatura?

If the soreness does not improve after 72 hours and remains the same by 96 hours, becomes debilitating, there is significant swelling in the extremities, or your urine becomes dark, you need to see a doctor.

If it is an injury, then you will most likely feel pain immediately during your workout. Krepatura appears gradually, often the next day. Muscle damage leads to limited mobility, and the pain lasts more than three days.

In conclusion, I want to say that pain should not be avoided or considered an indicator of the effectiveness of training. It shouldn't be your only gauge of fitness or endurance levels. People think that the most important thing is to work hard. But the main goal of any training is not to injure yourself. You will be able to increase muscle mass, become stronger and more resilient if you give your muscles the opportunity to rest and recover.

Unusual stretching of muscles with a new exercise.

How to treat muscles.

Pain prevention.

With a large load muscles can hurt in three cases.

1. You start practicing for the first time in the gym. It seems to you that everyone around you is so healthy and trained and you want to somehow show that you can do something.

And then you get active. In this case, you can make three mistakes in the initial training.

This is a large liftable simulator or barbell (dumbbell). The weight will actually be small, but for you, as a beginner, it will be decent.

And you perform the exercise completely with this weight. For example, squats with a barbell on the shoulders. Naturally the next day muscles will hurt quite a bit.

muscles hurt on the first and even stronger on the second day after training. Starting from the third day, the pain is significantly reduced and gradually disappears.

But not only big weight can lead to muscle pain.

2. There is such a thing as big number in exercise. A beginner should not do more than 2 sets per exercise.

3. And the next factor that causes muscle pain- it's big in approach. After all, the exercise can be performed for 5 repetitions, 10 repetitions, 15 and even 20 - 30 repetitions. There are instructors who recommend 20-30 repetitions for a beginner.

This is a fairly large number.

In my opinion, the most best number for a beginner, 10 to 15 repetitions.

We dealt with the heavy load. This is a great worker. projectile weight, large number of approaches. And big number of repetitions in approach.

To understand you even better in this matter, I will tell you.

For initial training, we take the working weight of the projectile, which is approximately
60% of your maximum weight. The weight that you can lift once. And don't try to lift that much weight. You just determine it by eye and also approximately calculate 60% of the maximum weight.

Then do one or two sets with this weight for 10-15 reps. With such a workout, you will save your muscles from strong pain. No muscles, of course, can hurt a little, but not to such an extent that it is impossible to get out of bed or sit down.

Mechanics muscle pain due to microfractures in muscle fibers.
fresh muscle fibers

muscle fibers after exercise

But if the muscles are trained, then they heal quickly and practically do not hurt the next day.

So the rule is:

beginners and long-term untrained athletes

(more than 2 - 3 weeks) you need to start exercising in a gentle mode.

In the process of training, lactic acid is also produced in the muscle fibers, which also brings a certain pain to a person. But it is absorbed from the muscles within a few hours, so the next day it cannot hurt.

Unusual stretching of muscles with a new exercise.

Let's analyze muscle stretching using two exercises as an example. Squats with a barbell on the shoulders and breeding dumbbells to the sides while lying down. These are the most stretching exercises.

It turns out that by doing exercises more than necessary out of habit, we not only give the muscles small tears of fibers, but also a simple physical stretching of the muscles and ligaments attached to them.

“Try” without the habit of squatting with a barbell for five sets of 12 reps and for the next two days you will fully experience the moments that I write about in this article.

Will hurt at least gluteal muscles and especially the inner thighs. It will be absolutely impossible to sit down, as well as to stand back.

If you do more lying down than you need at first, you will get pain in the pectoral muscles for the next two days. Not only because of microfractures of muscle fibers, but also because of the banal overextension of muscles. pectoral muscles usually hurt so much that the usual pressure on them with a finger causes intolerable pain.

In the same way, beginners actively train the press. You can understand them, many go to the gym to first of all remove the stomach. So it needs to be trained more carefully.

No matter how. In everyday life, our press does not practically work, and therefore these muscles are one of the weakest. They are not trained. And therefore, any load on the press will be significant for him. The press is not used to work.

So we need to save him the first time. Make two approaches to it. Such a load will allow you to train the press for the next lesson.

It even happens that a beginner does a lot of approaches to the press. He gets pain and still, without waiting for the pain to pass, at the next workout he diligently trains the press, despite the very unpleasant sensations in the abdominal muscles.

As a result of such training, a person does not receive microtears in the muscle fibers, but a strong overstretching of the muscle fibers themselves and even muscle tears.

Such a mountain athlete has to forget about training for a long time. He will have to treat his abdominal muscles already.

Why did I describe these cases in such detail? Because the muscles need to be protected, if, in your opinion, you haven’t finished something in the gym, you don’t need to overstrain the muscles. What you have not completed, you will make up for in the next workouts.

There is an opinion that if you work out, and the muscles do not hurt the next day, then the training was in vain. It is not right. With regular training, the muscles adapt, micro-tears heal quickly. And it is not necessary that after training the next day there should be pain.

What to do if muscles hurt?

Let's say you still exercised more actively than necessary and your muscles hurt the next day after class. The first step is to determine how severe this pain is. If the muscles are simply felt, but the pain is not very strong, tolerable, then nothing needs to be done. On the third day after training, everything will calm down.

But if you find it difficult to move. Each movement causes pain, it is impossible to press the muscle, then our muscles need help.

How to treat muscles.

Muscle pain the day after a workout can be relieved by massage.

Warm bath with salt for 30 minutes. Maybe with sea salt. Or pine extract.

Semi-alcoholic or vodka compress. It can be put on all night. Also a compress with camphor oil. Attach a cabbage leaf.

Apply rubbing and ointments: viprosal, diclofenac, fastum gel, voltaren. Menthol oil.

A visit to the bath with a steam room will help.

Drink more liquid water green tea, juices, etc.

Pain prevention.

When you start practicing, don't a large number of sets and reps on an untrained muscle. Don't put a lot of weight on the projectile. Do not do this after a long break from exercise for 3 or more weeks.

Be sure to do before your workout general warm-up . So that the whole body is warmed up and ready to lift weights. And don't forget to do special warm-up before approaching strength exercises. Although, if you have a training diary, then it is very difficult to forget about these warm-ups. Everything is in the diary.

It is important to accurately determine the strength of pain in the muscles. If the pain is mild and almost gone, then you can work out moderately for the next workout. But if it hurts a lot, then in no case should you load those muscles that bother you. It is better to skip the workout, or train other muscles.

Doctors advice:

Moderate soreness in the muscles (not in the joints) is a natural consequence of a good quality workout.
Pain that interferes with rest and exercise is a signal to stop exercising immediately and requires special measures (you should give the body a rest or seek help from a doctor).

The main causes of muscle pain:

1 . "Delayed" muscle pain. It occurs due to damage to muscle fibers and the release of prostaglandins and histamine (from them the muscle begins to hurt). It occurs about a day after training and lasts about three days. Accompanied by local inflammation, edema.

Prevention;

- warm-up, cool-down, stretching after training, light exercises for a sore muscle, massage, warm bath, sauna.

Treatment:

- anti-inflammatory drugs (as prescribed by a doctor, not on an empty stomach!);

- cold (on the first day) and heat (72 hours after the injury) to the injury site;

- balms, ointments, rubbing; + massage.

2. Depletion of glycogen stores (the "storage" of carbohydrates in the muscles and liver) during training.

Prevention:

- consumption of carbohydrate sports drinks during training;

- replenishment of carbohydrate deficiency in the first 20 minutes after training;

- diet with high content carbohydrates.

h. Increased muscle reactivity after long and hard training (symptom - night cramps) due to fluid loss.

Prevention:

Replenishment of fluid losses during training and during periods of rest.

- stretching exercises.

4. Overtraining.

In addition to physical overexertion, it can be caused by a number of serious diseases. Requires a mandatory visit to the doctor.

This should be done immediately if back pain:

- arose after a strong blow, fall;

- occurs immediately after lifting small weights;

- accompanied by weakness, numbness or trembling in the limbs, chills, strong urge to urinate or defecate;

- Makes you wake up at night.