One is that the pain appears immediately after exercise, but soon disappears. This is called acute muscle soreness.
The other is that it appears only a few hours or one night after exercise, accompanied by fatigue and fatigue, and even muscle spasm, stiffness and other symptoms. This kind of muscle pain disappears slowly, and it often takes 3 ~ 4 days or even 6 ~ 7 days to fully recover. This symptom is called delayed muscle pain or fatigue after exercise.
We often say muscle soreness mainly refers to the latter, that is, delayed muscle soreness.
There is a clear difference between muscle soreness and strain. In fact, muscle soreness is a normal and positive physiological manifestation. People often have obvious muscle soreness and discomfort after strength training or an unsuitable exercise (excessive exercise or new exercise, etc.). ). These symptoms will disappear naturally after a period of rest, and when you do the same exercise again, the symptoms of muscle pain will be obviously alleviated or not produced. Muscle strain caused by exercise is different. Muscle or ligament strain can cause large-scale pathological changes of skeletal muscle, such as cell degeneration and cell necrosis, which not only affects continuous exercise or training, but also may bring more serious consequences.
Self-identification of strain and muscle soreness
Muscle and ligament strain will suddenly appear due to a harmful action, and muscle soreness will gradually increase. There is a way to distinguish the two: muscle soreness can be relieved by pulling, but if it is a sports injury, pulling will aggravate the pain.
In short, muscle soreness and muscle (or ligament) injury after exercise are completely different. Muscle soreness can be relieved by rest, traction and massage. Muscle (or ligament) injury must be solved by medical means.
Why do muscles hurt?
The mechanism of muscle soreness is complicated, mainly including the following aspects: ① lactic acid accumulation. ② Muscle spasm. ③ Muscle fiber or connective tissue injury. ④ Other factors. Such as changes in osmotic pressure between tissues or acute inflammation, can also cause muscle soreness.
How is lactic acid produced?
Human movement needs energy. If energy comes from aerobic metabolism in cells, it is aerobic exercise. But if energy comes from anaerobic glycolysis, it is anaerobic exercise. During aerobic exercise, glucose metabolism produces water and carbon dioxide, which are easily excreted through breathing and are harmless to human body. However, during anaerobic exercise, grape glycolysis produces a large number of intermediate metabolites, such as lactic acid, which cannot be eliminated by respiration and forms lactic acid accumulation.
Self-management of muscle aches
rest
Rest can slow down the phenomenon of muscle soreness, slowly promote blood circulation, accelerate the elimination of metabolites, eliminate the supply and repair of nutrients in muscle soreness, and make it return to normal.
Static stretching and stretching muscles can accelerate the relaxation of muscles and relieve antagonistic muscles, and contribute to the recovery of spastic muscles. Perform static stretching exercises on sore parts, keep stretching for 2 minutes, then rest for 1 minute, and repeat. Doing this stretching exercise several times a day helps to relieve spasms.
Pat massage
Massage sore parts, relax muscles, promote muscle blood circulation, help repair injuries and relieve spasms. Of course, self-relaxation therapy can also be carried out, generally focusing on the neck, back and limbs, supplemented by the head and chest and abdomen. Specific methods are:
1. Back-pounding: Hold your hands in an empty fist and lightly beat your shoulders and waist. You can also beat your shoulders, back, waist and lower limbs alternately with a beating stick. When flapping, pay attention to the back light and the lower limbs can be biased.
2. Massage the leg: massage the front inner side and front outer side of the thigh repeatedly from top to bottom.
3. Shake your legs: When standing or sitting, the leg muscles relax and shake, and at the same time, you can perform circular activities of the ankle joint.
4. Push Tang Yin separately: Push Tang Yin point (the center of eyebrows) to the temple with both thumbs from left to right for 8 ~ 10 times, with an interval of 5 ~ 10 second each time, and then push Baihui point from the hairline of forehead for 5 ~ 6 times, with an interval of 5 ~ 10 second each time.
5. Press the chest and abdomen: press the chest from top to bottom and repeat 20 times; Massage the abdomen from left to right for 20 times. heat
This is the most effective method. Hot compress on sore local muscles can promote blood circulation, improve metabolism and accelerate the relief and recovery of muscle soreness, especially with slight stretching or massage, which will accelerate the elimination of delayed muscle soreness and promote it to return to normal.
How to avoid backache and leg pain after exercise
warm up
Sufficient warm-up activities before exercise, such as low-intensity aerobic exercise or low-load weight-bearing training, will relax the joints of muscle activity areas, accelerate blood circulation, and properly stretch the active muscle groups.
brick by brick
The load and time of exercise should be gradually increased, and should not exceed the scope of personal ability.
Avoid centrifugal contraction
When engaging in unfamiliar or infrequent exercise, especially when engaging in repeated centrifugal muscle contraction, muscle soreness is more likely to occur, and centrifugal contraction should be avoided.
Avoid unfamiliar sports.
Middle-aged and elderly people should try to avoid taking part in unfamiliar sports. Unless there is a coach's guidance, muscle aches or sports injuries are likely to occur.
Avoid excessive exercise
Many people seldom exercise at ordinary times, and occasionally exercise. Only when they are too tired will they feel "addicted", and it is inevitable that they will have backache and leg pain the next day. So people who don't exercise often should pay attention to enough exercise. Because a lot of exercise not only can't achieve the purpose of exercise, but also is harmful to the body.
relaxing exercise
Relaxation after strenuous exercise is very important, especially stretching the active parts, which can promote circulation and help to slow down or even avoid muscle soreness.
Conventional exercise
Exercise depends on long-term persistence and regularity, which can not only exercise, but also improve physical tolerance and reduce muscle soreness.