I Can't Walk For A Whole Week, Why Am I Sore???

What Does It Actually Mean When Your Are Sore After A Workout

You killed your leg day workout so hard that now you can barely sit down. The aftermath can last up to a week, but is that necessarily a good thing? And what the heck is happening to make you sore?

Truth is you my have heard "if you aren't sore, you aren't working out hard enough."

Or perhaps "no pain = no gain."

Or even "I'm only sore because it's lactic acid."

Let’s set the story straight with the biggest myths/ broscience....

Being sore is NOT a cause of lactic acid!!! Lactic acid is a whole other blog post because of it’s intricate physiology. Lactic acid is a byproduct (meaning it happens because of something else occurring) of the absence of oxygen delivered to the muscles.

When you workout you are creating micro tears to occur in your muscles. In order for any kind of muscular growth to occur you have to have these micro tears. These tears are the reason you are sore!!! The more tearing that had occurred the greater the soreness.

These micro tears need to happen for any muscular hypertrophy or performance adaptations where to occur. This therefore is NOT a bad thing!!!

However....

If you are so sore you can't sit on the sh*tter, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!!

You should NOT be so sore that you can’t walk for a week! When you go “No Pain No Gain” status you are doing yourself a HUGE disservice to yourself. In fact you are running a major risk of injuring yourself.

So what’s the perfect balance ? If you’re supposed to have microtears which promotes soreness and muscle growth but you’re not supposed to be too sore... then???

The happy medium is that you are supposed to train that you may be sore for a maximum of 2-3 days. The purpose of working out, is to give your muscles multiple exposures to stress each week for adaptations to occur (you know those #gainz ).

So if you’re too sore to workout again this week, you’re not maximizing your workouts to their fullest potential. Give your muscles a chance to recover and rest from the workout and the opportunity to grow for your fitness goals.

In Health & Exercise,

Dani Jones