One of the main roadblocks that hinders most people from continuing on their fitness journey is being sore from working out. This first workout is crucial to your journey and the soreness is crucial to your success. Therefore, if you experience sore muscles after workout, you should embrace this part of your journey although it can be painful and put you in a somewhat miserable mood.
SORE MUSCLE REBUILD
All that is happening is your muscles are being torn and rebuilt during this process. As you workout more consistently, your body will adapt to this and you will eventually no longer experience this soreness even if you are lifting with heavy weight. This applies when moving from sport to sport also.
WORKING OUT WITH SORE MUSCLES
Should you workout if your muscles are still sore after 2 days? I think you should definitely go and workout if your muscles are still sore. Why? Because you don’t want to miss the growth of your muscles by waiting too long. I’ve worked out with sore muscles before and only saw it enhance my fitness journey by speeding up the day I stopped hurting from workouts. Do I suggest lifting heavy weight or in a similar manner to what got you very sore in the first place? No, I recommend lifting light and focusing stamina and endurance by doing many reps.
SORENESS FROM SPORT TO SPORT
For example, let’s say you begin a New Year’s resolution with the goal of becoming fit. You go to the gym and lift weights for about an hour and half and feel great afterwards. You are well on your way to achieving your dreams and goals. But then the soreness hits, and you wish you never entered the gym (depending on how wide the adaptation – how hard you worked out vs prior). Then you push through it and the soreness becomes less and less until it is no more.
Then you say to yourself (assuming you can already swim), I want to do swim workouts in the pool. So you go into the pool and swim around for 2 hours with an intense workout. What will happen is you will experience that soreness all over again since the muscles are quite different from fitness to pool. So although you had overcome the soreness for doing fitness in the gym, a new soreness will start from swimming in the pool.
The key is not are you in shape for a certain activity. It is more do your muscles for whatever activity you’re doing require rebuilding based on the workout you just did. If you get into the different aspects of working out, you may experience this. It is all natural and normal and is a good sign that you are moving in the right direction.
Some additional fitness activities include
- Hiking
- Biking
- Mountain Climbing
- Walking/Running Trails
- Skiing
These are all different types of activities that require different muscles to excel at. If you move from one to the next and experience soreness. Experience it as a badge of honor (or your welcome into the activity). After all, it just goes away in time. Strive on!
