How to prevent Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness?
If your training was effective, you should feel some soreness the next day, and for two days at the most. If the second day is significantly worse than the first, and your soreness lasts into a 3rd day or beyond, you have what they call delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS), and it’s a sign that you trained too hard for you. There are no hard and fast rules on what is too hard as DOMS varies from individual to individual.
So now I want to talk about how to prevent Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness.
- Anti-Inflamatories
As DOMS is created as a result of inflamation, in the past it was considered a good idea for those susceptible to DOMS to take anti-inflamatories e.g. ibiprofen. However the downside of this approach is that anti-inflmatories reduce muscle growth and excessive use can damage your liver. Hence this approach has fallen out of favour.
2. Static Stretching
As its not that beneficial to stretch cold muscles, start with a gentle warm up to wam up your muscles. So both your joints and muscls are prepared and get the most benefits from stretching.
3. Constrast Showering
Ideally after stretching, jump in the shower and give yourself around of contrast hydrotherapy by alternating the temperature between hot and cold every two minutes. The contrast effect has definitely proven to be effective for reducing soreness and restoring muscle performance more quickly when its used the day after the workout, and any other day that a muscle is sore.
4. Warm Up
Ensuring that you warm up before exercising by lightly working the same muscles that you are going to train can go a long way to reducing DOMS and injuries.
References
Vaile JM, Gill ND, Blazevich AJ. The effect of contrast water therapy on symptoms of delayed onset muscle soreness. J Strength Cond Res. 2007 Aug;21(3):697-702.
Related Posts
Guess what science has discovered about back pain …
According to the UK's Office for National Statistics the UK economy loses almost 31 million work days per year which costs the UK economy £14 billion to bad backs, neck & other muscle problems. A bad back is of the most common causes of absence and 80% of p will suffer with people will experience back pain at some point in their lives. At Vitality Therapy we find back pain is something we treat on a regular basis. I know a lot of my clients and potential clients are interested in what the latest scientific research is on how effective massage is for treating back pain, becuase they don't want to waste their time and money if massage isn't going to help them. Until now scientific studies of the effectiveness of massage were conducted in controlled research situations. However in a recent study, a physician sent patients to a massage therapist. The massage therapist designed and provided a series of 10 massage -- at no cost to the patient -- in a clinical treatment environment. This clinical treatment environment mimicks the experience of people who choose to seek massage in the real world. More than 50 percent of those who participated in the study experienced clinically meaningful improvements in their low back pain. The reasearches concluded that the study gives primary care providers (i.e. GPs) the confidence to tell patients with chronic low back pain to try massage, if the patients can afford to do so. References http://www.nhsemployers.org/news/2015/04/bad-backs-cost-the-uk-31-million-days-of-work Elder WG, Munk N, et al, 2017, Real Wold Massage Therapy Produces Meaningful Effectiveness Signal for Primary Care Patients with Chronic Low Back Pain: Results of a Repeated Measures Cohort Study, Journal of Pain Medicine, 18(7):1394-1405
Can reflexology help control symptoms in cancer patients undergoing treatment?
Following on form last week's article where I explained that I believe in complementary medicine rather than alternative medicine, I wanted to share some scientific evidence. Between June 2015 to February 2016 a randomised clinical trail was carried out in the US looking at how effective reflexology was in assisting patients with colorectal cancer who received chemo radiotherapy. 60 patients were split into 3 groups. The first group received massage using classical massage techniques. The second group received reflexology. The final group, the control group, only received hospital standard care. All patients received were provided with the same clinic routine care. The researchers collectd data using an introductory form and the European Organisation for Research and Treatmend of Cancer quality of life questerionaires (C30 & CR29). The first group who receive classical massage found it was
- effective in reducing pain levels
- effective in reducing distension incidence
- effecitve in reducing pain levels
- effective in reducing fatigue levels
- lower incidence of distension
- lower incidence of urinary frequency
- improved quality of life
Can going to the sauna help your BP?
I will start with a confession. While I know the benefits of hydotherapy - basically you take a hot shower for 30 seconds then switch to freezing cold for 30 seconds, then go back to hot and repeat for 2 or 3 minutes - it has never appealed to me. It may be fantastic for blood flow and good for your liver, but to me it seems brutal! So in the past, I have only spent a few short minutes in a sauna and I have never been tempted to jump into the ice cold plunge pool afterwards - despite my finnish friends telling me how fantastic it is. So I was interested in the Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study which looked at if frequent use of a sauna has reduces the risk of high BP. The study looked at 1,621 middle-aged men living in eastern Finland. The study found that
- Going to the sauna 4 to 7 times per week reduces your risk of develping High BP by 46%.
- Going to the sauna 2 to 3 times per week reduces your risk of develpoing High BP by 24%.
