Priority Shift: Redefining Success in Fitness
Are you chasing a “good sweat” or “that good muscle soreness” as a measure of success in your fitness journey? Perhaps it's time for a paradigm shift.
In this blog post, we're diving deep into the common misconception surrounding soreness as a gauge of progress and exploring the vital importance of aligning your training approach with your ultimate fitness goals.
The inspiration for this post was based on multiple conversations had with clients and workshop attendees dealing with constant soreness throughout their week. Upon digging a little deeper, they felt that this was a necessary outcome representative of effective workouts. So let’s first unpack this idea of soreness.
What is Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS)?
DOMS is the discomfort or stiffness that often occurs in the hours or days following strenuous physical activity. This usually begins 12-24 hours following the activity and lasts for 24-48 hours from the onset. It's particularly prevalent when you engage in exercises that your body isn't accustomed to, increase the intensity, frequency or duration of your workouts, or miss a few more days than intended of training.
Does Soreness = Progress?
Before delving into management strategies, it's crucial to recognize that experiencing some degree of soreness after a workout is completely normal. But to say that soreness is a sign of success or progress may be going a bit too far. If this were the case, our bodies would always get sore when we placed a stressor on them that took them to a point of breakdown requiring a recovery phase.
However, we know this isn’t the case.
Once consistency of the new load/activity has been established, the body adapts and there is rarely much soreness following said activity. This does not mean your body is no longer improving in strength and fitness.
This is often where we see people start to run away with it.
When people equate post-exercise soreness with progress, they may fall into the trap of actively seeking out soreness as a measure of a successful workout. This mindset, although well-intentioned, can have detrimental effects on one's physical health and overall well-being.
Managing Post-Workout Soreness Effectively
While soreness is an expected part of the athletic journey, it shouldn't linger indefinitely or impede your ability to perform optimally. Here are some strategies to help you manage post-workout soreness effectively:
Take a Longer On Ramp: Avoid sudden spikes in workout intensity or volume, as this can increase the likelihood of experiencing severe soreness. For those new to training, it's helpful to start with an acclimation phase – one to three weeks of familiarizing the body with exercises and loads at a level well short of fatigue – to build a solid base of movement and load. For the more experienced lifter, the solution may be to temporarily space out sessions or increase rest times within a session when working into a new program or exercise.
Stay on the Move: During the DOMS window, it can be helpful to engage in light, low-impact activities such as swimming, cycling, or yoga to promote blood flow and minimize static soreness. While this doesn’t accomplish as much as once thought in the way of expediting recovery, it does give your body and brain low stress stimulus that can ease the feelings of soreness.
The Proactive Recovery: It can be tempting to lean into passive approaches to recovery like foam rolling, massage guns, and other “feel good” applications. While these do can provide the brain/body with less of the soreness sensation, this does not equate to expedited recovery. The most effective ways to facilitate recovery are through fuel, sleep and stress management. Ensure you’re fueling your body with a balanced diet rich in protein, carbohydrates, and essential nutrients to support muscle repair and recovery. Additionally, ensure that you are getting 7-9 hours of quality sleep.
Manage Your Stressors: (we’re piggybacking off of number 3 here, but this is a big one) For this one, think of your body like a cup and your daily stressors are the liquid. Stressors include work, family, relationships, anxiety, deadlines, commutes, outlook on an injury, exercise (yes, I said exercise), to name a few. Your cup size is based on multiple factors. This size represents your capacity. Each stressor that is put into your cup takes you closer and closer to your capacity. If you’re constantly remaining in the DOMS window for days (or weeks) on end, there’s a good chance you’re not recovering fully. Thus, it's like trying to refill your cup while it’s already overflowing.
Listen to Your Body: Pay attention to your body's signals and adjust your training accordingly. If you're consistently experiencing excessive soreness or fatigue, it may be a sign that you need to dial back the intensity, increase rest days, or consult with a qualified fitness professional for personalized guidance. Many times, one step back (in intensity) can result in two steps forward.
Avoiding the Pitfalls of Soreness Obsession
While it's natural to gauge the effectiveness of your workouts based on post-exercise soreness, it's essential to avoid becoming fixated on this metric. Using soreness as the sole indicator of progress can lead to performance plateaus, burnout, and even injury in the long run.
Instead, focus on holistic and reliable measures of improvement such as strength gains, endurance enhancements, and improvements in technique. By adopting a balanced approach to training and recovery, you can optimize your athletic performance while minimizing the risk of overtraining and injury.
So what are you supposed to do? Let’s answer that question with a question.
What Are You Trying To Do?
Instead of relying on how the workout made your body feel from a soreness standpoint, set goals and have a plan that aligns you with those goals.
One of the biggest discrepancies is when a person’s training regimen doesn’t line up with their goals.
For example, they will say, “I just want to look fit and not end up hunched over” or they’ll say, “I workout so that I can be strong and still do the things that I love into my later years."
Then when looking at their training they are doing HIIT classes 6 days a week, eating less than 1400 calories a day and not giving themselves any breaks from work to destress or recoup.
Sure, they are hitting some impressive fitness targets, but its all max effort, there is no room for recovery and they are not sustaining the work they’re putting in due to poor fuel and high stress.
This is a recipe for an issue at some point down the line.
And it is why having a plan that aligns well with your goals makes all the difference.
What if you could dial in your program to take up less time and allow for more recovery so that you felt better going into each workout. thus, were accomplishing even more in the gym?
This is what we help people with when starting out. We look into their overall capacity, physically, practically and mentally. We identify areas where they can dial in their plan to ensure they reach the goals they have set in the most efficient way possible.
If you found this blog post insightful, I'd love to hear from you! Shoot me an email (info@vitalmovementpt.com) and let me know what stands out. Your feedback helps me create more content that's valuable to you.
If you're ready to take the next step and discuss working one-on-one with me to address your goals and optimize your training regimen, fill out the form below. Let's work together to unlock your full athletic potential!
