Muscles Soreness

Muscle Soreness

If you ever wondered why your muscles are sore it comes down to 3 basic reasons:

* Muscle Damage/ As a result of repetitive contractions, microscopic tears occur within the muscle fibers themselves, causing pain and leading to inflammation, creating more pain.

* Damage to the Connective Tissue/ Microscopic tears occur to the connective tissue particularly as a result of eccentric contractions, which are contractions in which the muscles lengthens rather than shortens. Eccentric work is also called negative work and includes lowering weights or running downhill.

* Ischemic/Spasm Cycle/ The lack of oxygen and build up of metabolic bypass products causes pain, which causes the muscles to spasm. This causes the constriction to vascular structures, further reducing the oxygen available to the muscle, increasing the metabolic byproduct build up even more. The pain/spasm/pain cycle continues until the problem if addressed.

Immediate muscles soreness is due to build up of metabolic byproducts such as lactic acid and a lack of sufficient oxygen (ischemia). 

To relieve muscle soreness you must relax the muscles and increase the blood flow to the area (facilitating the break down of metabolic byproducts, the removal of debris, and to speed nutrients to the cell for healing).