How to Reduce Muscle Soreness After a Workout

Step 1

What I wanted to talk about today is stretching. I just recently read a study that came out last week that talked about pre-workout and post-workout stretching and the effects on muscle soreness session.

Step 2

What this study concluded is that basically on a one to 100 scale of muscle soreness, stretching before and after working out only reduced it by one point. That's muscle soreness.

Step 3

So, what I wanted to go over is stretching. I know you go to the gym a lot of times and you will be waiting to get on a bench, or bicep machine, and you have to wait for someone who is stretching for what seems like an eternity.

Step 4

So, I am going to go over stretching and what the benefits are. Personally I don't stretch before I work out. I usually wear a long sleeve shirt to get my muscles warmed up. That warms it up to increase my strength. I will stretch after I work out, an that's not for muscle soreness. The reason I stretch after I work out is to get more blood flow in the muscles. the more blood that flows into the muscles, the more nutrients that go into the muscles and what that does is basically it will help feed the muscle and help it grow, and also tone the muscle, the more nutrients that come in.

Step 5

So, what this study suggests is basically, you do not need to stretch before you work out if you are trying to reduce muscle soreness. I still stretch after I workout because it will get more nutrients in. But what it concluded is that it does not help your muscle soreness. If you are stretching for muscle soreness, before you are working out, again that study shows it is not going to help.

Step 6

Now, what you can do to basically help muscle soreness, is drink plenty of fluids and make sure you are getting plenty eight hours of sleep. The less sleep you get, the less time your body has to recover.

Step 7

And obviously, if your muscles are ever sore, do not do that body part again. If you chest is sore, do not do bench press again. What you are going to do is fatigue the muscle too much to the point where it is going to take too long for the muscle to recover and you are not going to see any strength benefits or growth benefits from that.

Step 8

So, again, what you want to do is drink a lot of water always, always get eight hours if possible. The more sleep, the better. Always eat good meals that have a good ratio of protein and carbs. Its going to help feed the muscle. You want to feed it to help it grow and recover. That's going to reduce muscle soreness. And again, the biggest thing that I see people do is they are overtraining. They are going in when their muscles are sore. And they are doing another workout with it. All that is going to do is hinder what you are trying to do. The muscle needs to recover and it needs its time to grow. So, I would wait at least 72 hours after a chest workout before you can think about doing chest again. And give it ample time to recover.