Muscle pain after a workout

We know from school that muscle pain after exercise is a consequence of excess lactic acid accumulation in muscle tissue. That is why, after each physical education class, schoolchildren are advised to spend some time in an active state, not to immediately go into a passive position. In motion, the redistribution of that same lactic acid naturally occurs, which contributes to the fastest possible muscle recovery and the cessation of pain.

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I trained, trained, but overtrained.

However, do not overdo it. Excessive desire to get beautiful, sculpted muscles, consolidate the rejuvenating effect or achieve excellent physical results in a short time is fraught with serious consequences that lead to sad diagnoses. Sometimes even unhurried and correct performance of a habitual exercise can end sadly. One wrong move can cause sharp pain in the muscles after training, which will indicate a sprain of the ligaments, muscles or their rupture. Sometimes fractures occur.

Athletes, especially professional ones, often suffer from joint diseases. Heavy load on the joints, over the years, leads to thinning of the joint capsule and to a decrease or complete disappearance of synovial fluid, which leads to the appearance of severe pain and inflammatory processes in the joints.

Pathological muscle pain after training does not always manifest itself sharply and intensely from the very first minutes. After exercising, there may be aching, long-lasting pain, accompanied by swelling in the damaged area, an increase in local temperature, and then the general body temperature.

As soon as swelling of soft tissues appears, you should immediately seek specialized help, because there is every reason to suspect the presence of a deep and serious lesion, injury or sprain.

Most often, a person can independently determine the nature of the pain by their own feelings, and correlate their feelings with the seriousness of the problem. Natural muscle pain after training, associated with fatigue of muscle groups, passes without any unnecessary manifestations. If the pain does not stop within 24 hours, but on the contrary, gains strength, then patience should give way to prompt actions to eliminate the cause of the pain.

Much attention should also be paid to such a problem as overtraining. After each workout, there should be a recovery period. Muscle pain after a workout should have time to turn into a state of satisfied muscle fatigue. Enhanced nutrition aimed at maintaining muscle growth, or a properly selected balanced diet, combined with vitamin complexes should certainly take place in the life of a person who has committed himself to regular sports.

Otherwise, the body, unable to properly recover after training, becomes exhausted, and pain syndromes, called phantom, begin to appear. Wandering pains localized in joints and muscles, inflammatory processes in large and small joints, general decrease in immunity, frequent colds, loss of strength.

If the body remains in this state for a long time, then the processes of thinning of muscle fibers begin, fragility of bones and tendons develops, and hormonal secretion decreases to minimum values. In this situation, serious injuries will not take long to appear.

Workouts without pain and injury

It is very difficult to train your body, especially if it has been completely deprived of an active lifestyle for a long time. However, muscle training is always good for it. You need to learn to love the natural, "correct" muscle pain after training. And "bad" pain - injuries, stretches and overtraining of the body should be avoided, prevented and all efforts should be directed to the correct execution of all exercises, maintaining your agility and desire to achieve excellent results in a short time.

Lactic acid rejuvenates the body

If training is constant, then muscle tissue, over time, becomes denser and lactic acid no longer accumulates in large quantities. Lactic acid itself does not have harmful properties for the body, although it is a by-product of a large number of physiological processes. Muscle pain after training lasts for several hours, during which time the blood intensively washes out all the "deposits" of lactic acid, transferring it from muscle tissue to the general bloodstream. In this regard, the overall acidity of the blood increases, and this, in turn, has a rejuvenating effect on the entire body. Here is another positive argument in favor of regular exercise.

Muscle pain after exercise arrives late

You can work out productively and not immediately feel any pain, except for severe muscle fatigue. And only a few hours later, muscle pain appears after the workout, which affects all muscle groups that were involved in the training process. Such pain is usually called delayed. There is a medical term "delayed muscle pain after training", often indicated by its abbreviation ZMB. Such terminology is well known to athletes, coaches and anyone who often deals with physical training and medical personnel who help cope with such troubles.

This kind of muscle pain after training can affect both a beginner and a professional athlete. It is difficult to avoid such a consequence in cases where a new set of exercises is being mastered, the overall load of the entire session or the duration of exposure to certain muscles increases. If delayed muscle pain develops after training, you can safely assume that the exercise is going correctly, as it should be according to science.

The mechanism of occurrence of pain of this kind is the formation of many microscopic wounds in the structure of muscle fiber. Due to the fact that a wound appears, the body receives a command to activate all its protective forces and begins to fight the disorder, restoring the integrity of the muscle. High secretion of the corresponding protective hormones promotes rapid healing of all cracks and wounds, prevents the formation of inflammatory processes.

Pay attention to an interesting detail. With the spread of these wonderful hormones with the blood flow throughout the body, there is a "revitalizing" effect not only on damaged muscles, the entire body is rejuvenated and renewed. A rapid rate of hair and nail growth is noted, therefore, skin cells are renewed at a faster rate. Here is another proof of the wonderful benefits of active sports.

The pain in the muscles after training will be less intense each time and over time, returning to the usual theme of training, in the same mode, it will soon disappear completely. If after the first exercise you did not feel any pain at all, this can only mean one thing - the ineffectiveness of all actions. Low load, an insignificant number of repetitions, an incorrectly selected set of exercises - all this can lead to a loss of time and little benefit from such activities.

Where to go if you have muscle pain after training

Knowing that pain after training can be different, “good” and “bad”, you need to pay attention to the duration of pain, its intensity and location. Observe the body's behavior in response to muscle pain. If muscle pain after training does not go away within 24 hours, gains strength, becomes pulsating at rest, is accompanied by side effects in the form of impaired movement in the area of pain localization, swelling of surrounding tissues - it's time to visit a traumatologist.

The traumatologist will conduct a visual examination and, if necessary, prescribe the necessary instrumental examination methods, which may include an X-ray of the affected area or a CT scan.

Injuries sustained during sports may not pose a great danger, but there are cases when it is worth giving up sports for a while in order to allow the damaged muscles or ligaments to recover. After the recovery period, returning to sports is gradual, going through stages of adaptation and raising muscle tone to normal levels.