69. Understanding DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness): Causes and Management

Hey there, dear friend! It's Mike again. Thank you for exploring my last blog post, “Exploring Bodyweight Exercises: Effective Moves for Strength, Flexibility, and Stability”. I'm thrilled to reconnect, and today, I'm diving into a fresh topic: “Understanding DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness): Causes and Management”. Your insights are always appreciated, so let's start by sharing if you had any DOMS in the last days below in the comments.

Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) is a common occurrence in exercise and sports, regardless of your physical condition. It often appears after an intense workout. The most important thing is to accept it and understand why it happens. Some exercises can be particularly tough due to the increased torque or pressure during the eccentric phase, when the muscle is lengthening while contracting.

This process generates more beneficial results and significant damage, potentially causing micro-damage at the muscle fiber level and resulting in an inflammatory reaction. DOMS typically appears 12-24 hours after the workout, in the areas where your muscles have been trained. Here are three main considerations to help you manage this discomfort:

First, DOMS is not always a good indicator of how beneficial or effective your workout was. Traditionally, we might think that if DOMS doesn't appear, it was a bad training session. However, research in recent decades has shown that it is not necessary to experience DOMS after every workout session. It is more useful to focus on other variables to track your progress. So, don’t worry if you don’t feel it.

Second, DOMS is often associated with the phrase “No pain, no gain,” which suggests that you should train as hard as possible, pushing to failure in all exercises and maintaining high intensity in every session. This is a misconception. We don’t need to push ourselves to the limit every day. The key is to program and organize your training weeks, varying the load and working with different percentages of your maximum capacity.

Third, DOMS usually appears after an intense session or when introducing new exercises. My suggestion is to incorporate these new modalities when you can get more sleep, are in less stressful periods, and are eating high-quality foods. Exercise is crucial to our lives, but we should not revolve our entire lives around it. It's fine to push ourselves and train intensely, but it's essential to choose the right times for your context.

As you can see, it is normal to experience DOMS after a workout and a hard session, but it doesn't necessarily mean you will gain more benefits or adaptations than with a moderate workout. Pay close attention to the load and identify how often you are experiencing it.