However, muscle soreness does not mean that training is in place, fat will not continue to burn, and it has no direct and clear effect on muscle gain.
Let's first understand what muscle soreness is.
Simply put, muscle soreness can be divided into three types: lactic acid accumulation, delayed muscle soreness and muscle strain.
Lactic acid accumulation: the pain caused by lactic acid will only appear during exercise, and it will be completely metabolized by the liver after a few minutes' rest and re-enter the circulatory metabolism. Most of the pain felt during fitness belongs to lactic acid accumulation.
Doms (delayed muscle soreness): This is a common phenomenon after exercise. The muscles are swollen and sore locally, generally starting from 12-24 hours after exercise and lasting about 72 hours.
There is no definite scientific evidence to prove DOMS principle. It is generally believed that a large number of repeated centrifugal contractions bring about the tearing of muscle fibers, and the broken muscle fibers produce a large amount of tissue waste, which needs to be cleaned up immediately. At this time, macrophages will come to clean up. In the process of cleaning, macrophages will release some inflammatory factors, which will lead to aseptic inflammation in a certain part, thus producing the feeling of muscle pain.
Muscle strain: it is essentially the movement of muscle fibers and connective tissue, which is generally caused by muscle overload. It usually occurs in the process of exercise centrifugation, and there is severe pain during exercise.
Different from delayed muscle pain, the pain caused by muscle strain is more severe and obvious, and external force is usually needed to help reduce swelling and dissipate blood stasis, so that the damaged muscles can be slowly relieved.
In most cases, delayed soreness is a sufficient and unnecessary condition for muscle growth, that is to say, the injury of muscle fibers will bring about the process of muscle repair and reconstruction, and muscle fibers will be strengthened and stronger than before, but centrifugal contraction is not the only index or necessary condition for muscle growth.
No matter whether DOMS itself or training pays more attention to muscle centrifugal contraction, there is no strong research to prove that they are more direct and better for muscle gain. Severe delayed soreness, on the contrary, is the performance of muscle injury beyond recovery ability. In this case, muscles may degenerate.
A clear study shows that during DOMS, muscle strength, elasticity and tension will decrease, so starting training at this time will greatly reduce the training effect.
Muscle pain is risky. Fitness is not the more painful, the better. The more painful it is, the more you need continuous training. On the contrary, persistent muscle pain can also lead to the decline of sports performance and even sports injury.
Exercise mobilizes all kinds of energy and systems in the body, including muscle glycogen, functional system, nervous system and skeletal system, which are all consumed. In addition to muscles, these systems and body endocrine also need to be restored.
Pursuing the training effect blindly and enjoying the pain brought by fitness, overtraining and overload will often accelerate the local muscle tissue injury to produce inflammation and even rhabdomyolysis.
Fitness is a trend and inevitable. The boundary between fitness and life is gradually blurring, and it has evolved into a way of life. However, we should have a clear understanding of our body and arrange fitness training scientifically and reasonably, and we don't need to take pain as an indicator of whether the training is perfect or not.
Fitness needs pain, but the more pain the better.