Soreness, tenderness, DOMS!

[gymrob]

Hi all,

I like many others are following the WOD's and whilst I wouldn't consider myself weak or strong, I certainly feel a tenderness in my muscles often the next day after the WOD and continuing into the day after! I mean I have read on the internet about DOMS and it seems that the cause is inconclusive; so how exactly does everyone guage whether they are ready for a workout or not? But since this is at the beginning of a cycle/ perceived overload maybe this is just natural and as you adapt it goes off. But in the short term if you train too frequently and don't allow appropriate adaptation occur the benefits of supercompensation may not be occuring which is the worry. Maybe the use of post workout nutrition such as whey protein will help enhance recovery.

Coach, do you have recommendations for your own athletes. Say they are at the beginning of a new cycle and are fairly beginner-ish and are training 4 days a week do you simply have them complete the work and find that they keep adapting throughout the cycle or do you have them lay off the work slightly?

Thanks.

[matthew.percussion]

As long as I know it is only DOMS and not some other injury I workout as scheduled, you're body will quickly adapt. For me it takes a week or less, occasionally I will have mild soreness last longer than that much nothing that inhibits my ability to work.

However, I cannot always complete all of the rx'd sets and reps when I have DOMS, for obvious reasons. Working out again will actually speed up the process of getting rid of DOMS if I am not mistaken.

I find that light stretching is a good way to decrease the pain. Also warming up very, very well before a workout can nearly eliminate the pain entirely, until you cool down again. :roll:

[Chris Hobbs]

Agreed, if it is just DOMS you should still be able to do the workout. For me any warm-up type movements are the worst, actual concerted effort movements work fine. Sometimes the DOMS is too bad to do a movement correctly, in which case it should be skipped IMO, but if sufficient rest is taken between days of the same movement that caused the DOMS this should not be the case. For me, two days after the initial workout is often the one that needs to be skipped if the exercise is being done daily - after that back at it without issue.

- Chris

[Luke Leaman]

If you are still sore from workout to workout, there are many things that you can do to enhance recovery. Here are a few:

Improve nutrition.

*Add betain and digestive aids

*Add protein and EFAs

*Add a high quality vitamin/mineral supplement

Improve supplementation

*Too much to write, I will get a list together

Improve rest

Take more days between workouts

*Just because it's a WOD does not mean that it will fit into everyone's work capacity. If you horrible work capacity, then you may need to take extra days off; the same goes if you have a stressful lifestyle: work, kids, sig other, etc.