With summer upon us, many people get the urge to start exercising or ramping up their exercise... So...
Is it bad to workout out with sore muscles?
In short – no
Unfortunately for a lot of people, soreness can become a deterrent for exercise.
A story I often hear goes something like ‘I tried working out but was sore for a week so I stopped and tried again two weeks later but the same thing happened. Then I waited a month and the same thing happened again! I just don’t think my body was made for the gym.’
Soreness is very common when you are new to working out; the best way for it to reduce is to gradually build up your load over time.
As your body adapts the soreness will become less frequent so it might just take a bit of persisting through the discomfort initially. The important thing to know is that in situations like this, it is unlikely that the muscle soreness is signalling any real damage, just a response to the strain you’ve put yourself under.
For those who have been working out for a while and are experiencing muscle soreness it could be worthwhile to see if there have been any significant changes to your training recently.
The soreness might be a sign that you’ve increased your load or volume a bit too much but even then it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes a deload week is enough to help the body recover and the soreness will not only reduce
but your performance and gains should increase.
But while generally it is not bad to work out with sore muscles there are some circumstances where you should not and may need guidance from a professional:
The soreness is accompanied by swelling or bruising
Continues for more than three days
The pain leads to a significant strength reduction which does not improve
It can be a really tough challenge being able to balance not doing too much and not doing too little when it comes to our training and muscle soreness is one of those signals that helps as understand that balance.
In most situations, there is nothing wrong with working out while sore but it can be helpful tool to assess if you’re getting the most out of your training.
