Delayed Muscle Soreness – Pleasure Or Pain?

Delayed muscle soreness is something commonly associated with exercise. it is also referred to as delayed onset muscle soreness and also as muscle fever. All these names describe the phenomenon where after a period of muscular exertion, soreness is experienced in the muscular tissue. This can last from a day to more than a week, depending on the intensity of the work out to which the muscles were exposed. Aside from explaining what muscle fever is, this article will also discuss how to avoid it, how to heal from it and how a body builder might utilize it.

The pain from delayed muscle soreness can be quite intense and so it is not the most desired experience. However, most research shows that delayed muscle soreness is caused by micro-tears in muscular and connective tissue. These are also some of the pre-requisites to trigger muscle growth.

From a purely body building point of view delayed muscle soreness is a good sign because it means that muscle fibers have been damaged and their repair is going to occur next, resulting in increased size. There is no science contesting this theory and as most bodybuilders will tell you delayed muscle soreness is just a great sign that you’ve had a great work out and trained that muscle well.

From a more preventative point of view, it must be noted that delayed muscle soreness is in a way, a one-off thing. Once the muscle is put through its paces in a particular work out. it will experience soreness, but once it recovers it will not occur again until the work out is changed once more. This is one of the reasons why bodybuilders change their work out routines often. To shock the muscle into further growth by putting it through a new work out.

This soreness can be gotten rid of by making very small and gradual changes to your work out routine. This will prevent the sudden shock. In addition, any activity that increases blood flow to the sore muscle is also useful, though to a limited extent, to alleviate the delayed muscle soreness.

If you are attempting to gain muscle, it is very important to note that once you’ve worked out hard, you must also provide your body with the necessary nutrition and rest to help heal the fiber damage. Warming up, Stretching and cooling down techniques are also greatly advantageous as they increase blood flow and nutrient supply to the effected muscles.

Is delayed muscle soreness pain or pleasure? It depends on you. If you are looking for a sign that you’re working out your muscles hard and doing things right in the gym, then its a pleasurable experience, but if you just want to lose a bit of weight or are trying to keep that cholesterol level down without working on your body too much, delayed muscle soreness might be a painful stumbling block.

I hope this article was useful in telling you what delayed muscle onset is, what it can signify to a body builder, how to heal effectively from it and how to avoid it. I myself am a fitness freak and enjoy gaining muscular weight and muscle fever makes me smile.