Training Misconceptions Part 3: Muscle soreness and strength gain
Contrary to popular belief, soreness is not the best indicator of an effective workout. Read on to learn if you have to feel sore to get strong, what soreness really means, what the other more reliable mechanisms are that we should be focusing on, and tools to use to make sure your workouts are consistent and effective.
Do you have to feel sore to get strong?
Short answer - NO. Being sore is not a requirement for muscle growth (aka muscular hypertrophy) or strength gain. While you might often be sore after a good productive workout, it’s just because soreness is a common side effect of other more important mechanisms at work. Despite what fitness marketing tells you (“you won’t be able to walk after this leg workout! try it today!”, for example), you really shouldn’t feel debilitating soreness after every workout.
What is soreness then? When should I feel sore?
Muscle soreness results from muscle damage (torn muscle fibers) after intense activity. This often happens after we perform a new movement for the first time (or for the first time in a while if you’re just getting back into your routine after a hiatus of 3-4+ weeks). It’s also a common result of eccentric muscle contraction (aka working against gravity - controlling stuff on the downward portion of a strength exercise, or running downhill).
Muscle soreness is normal and to be expected if we are applying adequate load to muscles during our workouts (lifting heavy weights!). However, it should not be severe enough to greatly limit your physical activity, apart from initial workouts at the beginning of a program. Your body should adapt to your program and feel less sore after those initial workouts. That’s a good thing - means you’re getting stronger, it doesn’t mean your workouts are getting less effective.
What if I do feel excessive soreness after almost every workout?
It’s likely you’re doing one of these two things:
Chasing novelty too much (consistency > novelty). New workout classes every week will likely result in muscular damage (that’s why you feel so sore!), but they won’t employ the other ESSENTIAL mechanisms for actually gaining muscular strength that I discuss below. You’re only employing one of three mechanisms here, so you won’t see strength progress. You can definitely incorporate some new moves into your workouts, they just shouldn’t make up the majority of your program. Structure workouts around basic fundamental movements, then incorporate a couple of new supporting movements to keep things interesting and to find more moves that work for you. Check out my last training misconceptions post where I focused solely on novelty.
Not allowing for adequate recovery. Remember to sleep, eat enough protein and vegetables, drink enough water, and give muscle groups adequate recovery time between workouts. Take 1-2 full rest days a week minimum.
If soreness doesn’t equal progress, what factors should I consider instead?
These are the three mechanisms by which we build muscle (or mechanisms for muscular hypertrophy). Mild soreness is simply a common (but not necessary) byproduct of employing all three.
Mechanical tension. In strength training, we put our muscles under tension by lifting heavy things with proper form and mind muscle connection. As we grow stronger, we add more weight to these movements to increase the tension. The ability to properly execute an exercise with more weight than you did before is a far better marker of progress than feeling super sore and tired.
Metabolic stress. This is all the stuff that’s related to fatiguing a muscle or muscle group. We feel this fatigue due to the build up of lactic acid, depletion of creatine stores (side note: this is also why creatine supplements can help you to build muscle more efficiently. Larger stores mean your muscles are slower to fatigue), and a lack of oxygen. Part of metabolic stress is performing exercises at an intensity high enough to deplete oxygen stores in the working muscles. We achieve this by working close to failure (“burning out”) and sticking to allotted rest breaks, among other things.
Muscle damage. In a good program, this is the result of the first two mechanisms. After muscle damage, our bodies (when fed adequate nutrients) overcompensate during recovery to grow muscle tissue stronger than the tissue that was there before. Muscular damage can also result from novelty, but again thats the only one of the three essential mechanisms that novelty achieves (not enough!).
Wondering what repetiiton range you should stick to for your goals, check out my first misconceptions post! I discss ideal rep ranges for common training goals. TLDR: repetition ranges are simply guidelines. Your level of fatigue is far more important than a specific number of repetitions.
Struggling to build strength? Training tools to consider:
Short on time? Try set structures including supersets (two back to back moves, then a timed rest), trisets (3 moves back to back, followed by a rest), or drop sets (work until failure at a heavy weight, immediately drop down to the next weight and continue for as many reps as possible).
Consider programming muscle splits. Focus on one muscle group for an entire session in order to adequately fatigue a given muscle group.
Use timers. If you tend to take long rests, use the timer on your phone so that you get enough rest between sets, but not too much.
Honest self check in. Assess your workouts ask yourself these questions:
Are you increasing weights at appropriate intervals to keep things physically challenging?
If the answer is no, have you been increasing repetitions at the same weight? This results in an increase in volume of weight lifted over the session despite not increasing the load you’re lifting.
Are you concentrating on using the proper muscles to do the work?
Are you focusing on control, and not just swinging the weights up and down?
Are you resting/socializing/checking your phone for too long?
Are your workouts truly structured? Do they build off of one another or are you just attending random classes that make you sweaty?
Are you doing too much cardio? Excessive intense cardio can get in the way of strength building and muscle recovery. Heart health recommendations are 150 mins/wk. Check this post out where I discuss various cardio zones and when/how to incorporate them.
Should I be worried if I don’t ever feel even mildly sore after my workouts?
Probably. While it’s theoretically possible to make maximal progress without ever feeling sore, it’s highly unlikely. If you aren’t ever feeling soreness, check in with yourself, your program, and/or your trainer to make sure you’re really doing everything I’ve covered. If you are, there are a couple of reasons to consider.
Maybe you’ve adapted to the current volume (aka weights/reps) that you’re using and need to increase the overall intensity by increasing resistance (weights) used.
Maybe you have been training too hard too regularly and need a deload week. Think about, professional athletes all have an off season. You, a normal person, might also need an off week. This will allow you to train harder and more efficiently in the end. There are a bunch of complex deloading structures out there, but most of us don’t need to think that hard. This might look like a few days to a week of light workouts, more walking and yoga. After that you can reintroduce heavy weights
Mind muscle connection. Consider which movements you’re able to really do correctly and do those more. Test different variations of fundamental movements to find one where you are able to both use an adequately challenging weight and feel the right muscles working. To get stronger, you need to repeat moves that are effective for your body week after week. There are basic movements that i teach everyone, but finding the exact variations that work for you may take a bit of trial and error. Our bodies are basically giant science experiments!