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 3^rd 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.

1. 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.