This is because small microscopic tears in the muscles occur when your exercise. The damage and inflammation along with the tears then causes the pain you feel a day or so afterwards. This effect is called DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness).
The severity or length of muscle soreness depends on your fitness level and the regularity of your workouts. Working out for the first time in a long time will usually cripple you the next day- it is part of the process of riding the GAINS TRAIN!
So how do I help my recovery?
BY EXERCISING MORE! YAYYY!
You see, the fitter you get, the less sore each workout will make you until you forge your body into iron. You see, your body is happiest when it works hard and so exercise will strengthen it, make it more agile and robust and adapt.
lol. You've probably heard the gym myth: "Bro, if you wanna get massive like me yeh? You gotta have those odd rest days! Because you know, when you isolate and exercise muscle groups dis-proportionally to what the load on the other parts of the body is (i.e. the traditional leg days, arm days, core, etc routine) you need to give time for the muscles to recover!"
Sounds convincing...BUT IT'S ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT. Any body-building or athletic guide that still goes on about "rest days" is not keeping up with the times. If the body does not work, it will not change. LESS IS LESS, NOT MORE! Not one scientific study has attributed good athletic performance to "rest days, but rather, nutrition and rest in general like sleep". Rather, athletes are known to find ways to reduce recuperation time so that they can get more training done.
Even body-building sites are beginning to get wise to the fact that you need to train as much as possible in order to see gains. Studies have shown that lower intensity active recovery is better than a purely rested day. Active rest days allow for greater gains to be made in strength and endurance, faster. This is called the super-compensation response.
The fact is:
1) The more you rest, the more likely you are to give up your fitness journey.
2) While we experience muscle soreness, it's easy to start feeling lazy, slow down, take a break...have a doughnut. What happens then is that physicists call the "rolling stone effect". The moment you slow down the body likes it. The moment you give your body permission to rest it stops working and then doesn't want to start. In other words, resting just makes it more difficult to get gains. Pure "rest days" and muscle soreness have become common excuses and YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE A SUCKER!
3) Train for recovery, walk or jog or lighten down your workout with fewer reps and that will aid your recovery
4) Accept that your body is geared up to deal with muscle soreness and fatigue. The main battle happens in your head. Exercising with sore muscles, reasonable training without going all out, is extremely beneficial and will help you get stronger faster and, eventually, reduce the next day soreness. You just need to power through in the beginning and do something, anything but do it all the same.
If you are so sore that you can't go through an exercise routine, just do something else: walk, swim, throw a Frisbee, play basketball. The point is to just prevent your body from coming to a complete rest. You will only have to work so much harder to start it up again if it does.
It is important therefore to get as much good quality sleep. Muscle growth and bone strengthening can happen during rest periods, not just during sleep, although they accelerate when we are asleep, but all the other important functions require that we do fall asleep before they even get started.
Research shows the importance is more on quality of sleep rather than length. So a five hour deep sleep that is even and relaxing is more beneficial than eight hours of tossy turny sleep.
On the question of whether you should exercise before sleep... The AMSF suggests that you should exercise at least 3 hours before going to bed but that is a guideline intended to help you slowly wind down as you get to bed time, rather than a hard and fast rule. I usually exercise before I sleep, drinking chamomile tea and milk afterwards to aid in sleeping.
Basically, exercise when you can provided it does not affect the quality of your sleep and make sure you get quality sleep because that is where the gains you are looking for begin to happen.
Guide to Muscle Recovery
If this is your "rest" day, you need to work for it. Below are some suggestions on what you should do depending on how much your muscles ache:MY MUSCLES ARE ACHING- Welcome to the club. Do what you always do but level down or take longer breaks between sets. Add some stretching before and after your routine.
MY MUSCLES ARE SORE- Business are usual but use a lighter training routine. Go for a run.
MY MUSCLES ARE REALLY HURTING- Wrap up well and go for a jog. Do 5 push-ups and 10 squats every 2 hours.
MY MUSCLES ARE IN AGONY- Keep them warm and go for a walk. Do some stretching. Throw a ball, Take a long swim at the pool.
The body is made to work. It adapts to stimuli which then causes change. You get stronger, faster and fitter only when that stimuli is present and the body is made to adapt to it. So next time you feel the urge to take a break because you've worked a little harder than usual think about what you are working for. Don't stop, change pace and keep on working forward towards your goals without stopping.
Over-training
It is possible to over-train. While there is no such thing as too much training, there is such thing as insufficient time to recover and adapt and this is what over-training refers to whether its too little sleep or not enough rest. The muscles need to have sufficient time to recover, repair and rebuild. If the body gets confused, it is not sure what to build for. Someone who is training for speed for example and does not give his muscles enough time to recover forces the body to now work like it's training for endurance. This confusion leads to the sense of diminishing returns, also known as "burnout" that even experienced athletes report. During that phase, we can end up training harder and harder, for longer periods of time and all we see are drops in performance and no visible improvements in the body's physiology.
The easiest way to avoid over-training is to make sure you get sufficient sleep to help you recover, have the odd light day not pure rest day when active recover will do its work. Also, keep a detailed diary of everything you do in training so that you can reduce reps and increase set rest time when needed.
Overall:
-The body needs challenging work to physically change and make gains
-Rest does not work. You lose ground.
-Sleep is the best passive rest phase you can have
-Active rest (where you reduce workout intensity or substitute a different, lower-intensity exercise) work best for muscle recovery.
-Refer to Guide for Muscle Recovery above to find suggestions to relieve your muscles.
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Check out the website where most of this information comes from: http://darebee.com/fitness/muscle-recovery.html
Check out the website where most of this information comes from: http://darebee.com/fitness/muscle-recovery.html
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