Firstly, congratulations to everyone who finished the City 2 Surf! Based on the amount of people who were limping around the office like myself last week, I’m sure there are a quite a few of you asking yourself if it was a good idea to run 14km, including a hill that never seems to end.

Which brings me to this month’s tip – why am I so sore days after training?

Muscle soreness is something I'm sure EVERYBODY can relate to. Even if you've never stepped into a gym or run 14km, I'm sure that sometime in your life, you've done some sort of exercise or heavy work and experienced muscle soreness.

24 hours to 48 hours after a hard workout that your body is not used to, most people begin to experience soreness in the body parts trained. This is called Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, or DOMS for the acronym junkies.

DOMS is caused by tiny microscopic tears that occur in the muscle as a result of high intensity exercise. Over the next few days, the muscle begins to rebuild itself only this time it makes itself stronger, so that if you put your body through that exercise intensity again it will be easier, and you will experience less, if any, after workout soreness the next time. So basically, I’m saying that muscle soreness after a workout is a good sign. Then again like most personal trainers I am a sadist.

Now a question I get asked a lot: If I'm still sore from my last workout should I still train?

Simple….No. Don’t train sore muscles. Your muscles are trying to repair and make themselves stronger. If you train them while they are sore they will hate you, and you will not get any of the benefit of training them in the first place. If you are going to train, train another muscle group or do light cardio.

A question I get asked even more frequently than the last: How can I make the soreness go away?

Well the scientific jury is out on whether or not you can actually influence the decrease of DOMS, except of course by not doing the exercise in the first place. But I know you don’t want to hear that so here are some things you can try:

• Warm up and stretch – before and after the workout then for a few days after to release the muscles
• Massage – increases the blood flow to the muscle which may help the ‘healing’ process
• Light cardio exercise – swimming (including jogging in water) and stationary bike are popular with football players the day after the game to increase blood flow to the muscles.
• Pain killers and anti inflammatory creams
• Icing the area – with ice not icing sugar

Hope this helps

Til next month,

Chris

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