Quit Worrying About Soreness Already!

I'm going to shamelessly name-drop here, but I'm also going to admit that it thrills me to death when I get to talk to people who are way, way smarter than I am about training and fitness.  Salieri had Mozart and it drove him to madness; I have guys like Jim Smith and Sara Wiley and it just makes my eyes bug out with awe and wonder.  

Jim Smith wrote an book called Combat Core Strength.  He trains MMA guys, has written for Men's Fitness, and is one of those rare trainer guys who combines wouldn't-want-to-mess-with-him badass-hood with book-smart erudition.  

Sara Wiley is the Associate Director of Strength and Conditioning for Athletes at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and was recently named the 2007-08 National Strength Coach of the Year.  She also is way smart and way badass at the same time.  Smith and Wiley are Renaissance people.  It's that mens sana in corpore sano thing (I'm also going to Latin-drop).  

I learned a lot from both conversations, but one point they both made, which I think is something general-fitness types don't hear enough is that SORENESS, OR A LACK THEREOF--IS NOT NECESSARILY A REFLECTION OF THE QUALITY OF THE WORKOUT THAT INDUCED IT.

So all you people who go around saying:  "I had a killer workout yesterday, I'm so sore!" or "I'm not sore at all--I need to work harder!"--cut it out.  Soreness is such an elusive little imp that its presence or absence is almost meaningless.

Localized soreness--either directly after a workout or in the hours and days following a workout (aka DOMS, or Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness)--may or may not happen as a result of a hard workout, and there are many factors that influence how sore you get, how long it lasts, indeed, whether or not you get sore at all, including diet, sleep, stress, past injury, exercise history etc.  

Jim Smith called the association of soreness with a good workout "One of the most pervasive myths visited on the American public."  Sara Wiley said she often has to talk her athletes out of doing isolation work for the core because they sometimes feel they aren't getting enough core work--this after an hour of dead-lifts, farmer's walks, and other core-intensive movement.

Truth be told, no one is absolutely sure why we get sore after an intense workout.  We think that it's because we've worked the muscles hard and maybe damaged them a little, and the amount of soreness is relative to the amount of damage we've inflicted.  

But most studies indicate that exercise-induced muscle damage repairs itself after 48 hours--right around the time that DOMS typically peaks.  In other words when the muscles have healed, the soreness is often at its worst.  

Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

So there's confusion about the source and reason for DOMS.  Gym-warrior types like to be sore because it makes them--okay, us--feel like we worked hard and challenged ourselves.  And that may--or may not--actually be true.  

But that doesn't mean that if we aren't sore, we didn't have a good workout.  It just ain't so.  In fact, if you're NOT sore, you might give yourself a pat on the back, because typically, the fitter you are, the less sore you get. 

So quit worrying about it.  

And go vote.