Working out

[PJ]

My muscles usually get sore the next day after a workout at the gym. My friend tells me the soreness can be avoided by stretching more prior to the workout. Is this true in your experience? Can you really avoid all soreness by stretching a priori?

[warlock110]

My muscles usually get sore the next day after a workout at the gym. My friend tells me the soreness can be avoided by stretching more prior to the workout. Is this true in your experience? Can you really avoid all soreness by stretching a priori?

um, not really... stretching really well will prevent "some" soreness, but regardless of being "sore" or not, you still can't really work those muscles the days after... so basically it's useless, stretching is only for injure prevention...

[jiang bao]

If you're not sore after working out, the work out probably wasn't effective. Stretching only helps to loosen your muscles and reduce the chance for injury.

I am only talking about working out to add muscles. I don't know much about working out to lose weight, but I imagine if you exercise your muscles for any purpose, they will become fatigued and should be sore.

[LuNaR]

happened to me before, stretching doesnt work. just workout daily, and soon it wont be sore anymore.

[yittz]

It's normal to be sore, and suppose to be sore.

If it's power/bulking training, the stress you put on the muscles cause muscle damage, which causes an inflammatory response, hence pain.

In cardio work outs, if you can't flush out the lactic acid and other waste metabolites quick enough, they accumulate and cause pain. This will improve with time as you getter fitter.

Stretching loosens the muscle and is suppose to prevent injury. But a metanalysis showed that it is not statistically significant. To prevent one injury, an average regular gym visiter will need to stretch for 23 years. It's effect on pain reduction after exercise is also minimal that it's not worth doing. This doesn't mean you shouldn't warm up. Which has been shown to prevent muscle damage and reduce exercise delayed pain (still relatively small effect though).

[duguxiaojing]

it's prob DOMs...(delayed onset muscle soreness or something like that?)...you don't need to be sore to have a good workout...but if you are it's sometimes a good indication that you've worked the muscle enuff for some growth....less you pulled something lol...