Soreness

[irongymnast]

Should I exercise while sore?

[Patrick Angelo Sardilli]

how many days of exercise did you do?

Moving around while sore is a good thing to flush out the lactic acid and such.

Other opinions?

[Cole Dano]

You might need to start slowly and do some light movement / dynamic stretching to get circulation in the affected area. This is the best possible thing and the soreness is now generally believed to be caused by micro-tearing. The increased blood flow will promote healing/recovery. Often the blood flush will very quickly reduce the soreness and it will be fine to do your normal workout.

[irongymnast]

I was doing light conditioning work during the summer and now I hit the gym for 5 hours, training hard. I don't know if it's soreness, it's more of the 'good pain' (when I apply tension to specific muscles) after a good exercise. It's been 4 days now and I want to go to the gym again but I don't know if it's recommended to train while still 'in pain'.

[Cole Dano]

Well irongymnast it seems like as answers come you are changing your question. Its always important to give as much information as possible when asking a question, otherwise we are all wasting our time.

First you have to determine are you injured or just suffering from DOMs, if you still feel it in a couple of days then its more than likely an injury, DOMs will normally go away within a couple of days after it starts, but in bad cases 5 days max.

[irongymnast]

Yes sorry.

I'm definitely not injured. It's gotta be DOMs. But is it ok to train while suffering from DOMs?

[Cole Dano]

Not a problem.

Yes its OK, its often the best cure. The DOMs is sort of self limiting anyway, in that if you are really sore, its hard to do anything anyway. It won't harm you to exercise with DOMs, but it is a good idea to try to intelligently warm up, light aerobic type movement to get blood flow in the sore area and so stretching help.

[PirouettePal]

When I was going to the gym, one of the things my personal trainer advised me to do was not strain my body. While there's good pain that derives from tension (like you mentioned), it isn't always a good thing. Basically, I was advised to work every other day. Work, rest, then work again. Now, if you're still sore and it's been a while, you may want to inquire with a physician. Of course, pain can dissipate with time. So if you're not injuring yourself and you're experiencing dull pain, I wouldn't worry too much. Of course, I don't know how this would pertain to gymnastics specifically -- as it's far more strenuous and demanding than what I was doing.