Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS)

Soreness: What Causes It, How To Alleviate It, And Does It Even Mean Anything

You went in crushed your workout, a good leg workout, really hard, gave it your best effort, left it all in the gym. You’re feeling good about yourself, go on with your day, hit your protein/calorie goals, then get a good night’s sleep.

You wake up the next day and immediately realize you’re down bad…

You struggle to get out of bed, you go to take your morning poop and realize you’re about to have a rough day, you’re so sore you can barely sit down and get up off the toilet.

You suddenly question why you do this to yourself and even regret that extra set on the leg extension machine.

This is a tale as old as time, almost all of you can relate. You are experiencing the painful (and wonderful, if you’re sick in the head like me) feeling known as DOMS—Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness.

As I said, some of you will enjoy this, for some of you this will be rather a nuisance, especially if you work more of a physical job.

DOMS is inevitable, you will be sore at times, BUT we can take steps to largely avoid this and alleviate some of the pain.

What Causes DOMS?

Contrary to what was previously thought, DOMS is not a result of lactic acid build up—this has long been debunked.

Rather Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness is caused by microtears, this is known as exercise-induced muscle damage (EIMD).

This muscle damage causes a cascade of effects that trigger inflammation and other signals to your body, but do not let “muscle damage” fool you, this is not a bad thing (dose dependent) and is potentially* necessary for muscle growth.

The most common cause of DOMS is simply new stimulus to our body. This new stimulus could be a number of things:

1. You are newer to training—you’re untrained.

2. You are incorporating new movements and exercises.

3. Switching the frequency, intensity, volume (stimulus) of your workouts.

These will be the most common causes, if you are to provide new stimulus, we can almost guarantee some type of soreness—how sore though will depend on your training experience. The more trained you are, the less soreness you are likely to have.

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* I say potentially because the relationship between muscle damage and muscle growth are not fully understood. It is safe to say muscle damage does influence new growth, but to what degree is rather debated. My opinion is that muscle damage is a rather insignificant marker of hypertrophy—especially the more advanced you are.

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Do We Need To Be Sore To Make Progress?

A common fallacy that floats around the fitness world is that soreness = a good workout.

However this is simply not a good indicator or metric for a good workout and can actually mean we did too much. Again, your level of experience and what you did that workout will be the determining factor.

Soreness can actually be an indication that we are doing something wrong, that our recovery is off or we are doing too much in the gym and training beyond our body’s recovery capabilities.

Some common sense is going to have to come into play here:

Are you sore because instead of your regular workout you did a few extra sets or exercises? If so, this can be expected.

Are you brand new to lifting? Again, this is to be expected.

Did you change nothing about your workout and suddenly you’re much more sore than usual? Now something might be up and we need to investigate further.

Soreness causes a drop in our body’s ability to produce force and obviously if we are in pain, our performance will suffer. So if we are still sore going into a workout for the sore body part, then we are playing at a disadvantage and this soreness is actually a negative.

Generally speaking, as you spend more time in the gym, you should not be *excessively* sore. Feeling a little bit the next day, maybe 2 if you had a hard session, is normal, but emphasis on “a little bit” meaning like 2-4 out of 10 on the “soreness chart” (1 being nothing, 10 being the most sore you’ve ever been from a single workout).

If you’re sore consistently, especially after weeks of starting a new program, you likely need to adjust your volume down—do less sets or eliminate a movement (if you are doing 2-3 per body parts).

Or you need to look at your recovery protocols, your diet/protein intake, sleep, and things like alcohol consumption.

(On that note, if you decide to drink after a lifting session, expect to be very sore, your body will essnetially get zero recovery from that lift and you will almost guaranteed be sore).

Being in a caloric deficit will make us much more likely to experience DOMS—we are not providing the body with adequate fuel (on purpose) so recovery can take a hit, especially if we are depleting our glycogen.

Generally DOMS will last between 24-72 hours—most find that if you are going to have DOMS, the 2nd day is typically the worst. This is normal do not be alarmed.

So to wrap this up, in short, DOMS/soreness is NOT a good metric of muscle growth. It is either an indication that you did something new or that you did not recover properly.

Muscle growth will come from mechanical tension and progressive overload. The best metric of muscle growth will simply be:

Did you increase the amount of reps or weight you did that workout?

If yes? Then it was a good workout.

If no? We need to look into why. (Was recovery off, Are we in a caloric deficit, etc.?).

How To Alleviate DOMS

Fortunately we have steps we can take to alleviate muscle soreness. Of course the first answer is “just tough it out” and you will have to do that, to an extent, but if we can make our lives easier, why not?

This is especially important if you have a physical job, this actually once almost cost me a job (a story for another day—10 sets of 15 on hack squat *might* be a little too much).

Proper Sleep

I won’t beat a dead horse and if you’re not new here it will NOT surprise you that sleep is my first proper recommendation. You need 7-9 hours of quality sleep, there is not getting around this.

Sleep is the foundation of recovery, without good sleep you can pretty well bet on being sore the next day or two.

Proper Protein and Calorie Intake

Again, this should not surprise you as if we want our bodies to recover—good recovery being the best way to avoid soreness—then we need to provide our body will the proper fuel and building blocks for our muscles to recover.

Too steep of a caloric deficit (we want to keep our deficits to 500-1000 calories, closer to 500 preferred) will not allow us to recover and we will feel it.

Too little protein and we cause the same issue—we want to shoot for 1 gram per pound of body weight (2g per kilogram of bodyweight if you’re fancy and don’t use the imperial system) to provide the muscle will the protein it needs to repair damaged muscle tissue.

Massage

Massage Therapy is actually the most effective way to alleviate muscle soreness. It is thought to do this by increasing blood flow to the muscle and reducing inflammation.

This can be very simple if you have a partner who will massage whatever muscle group you trained that day.

If you want to go the full-send route, then you can go to a local massage place after a hard training session and get massage work. Though costly, but a lot of you don’t care (however crypto prices are down).

Foam Rolling

Foam rolling AFTER (don’t do before, just dumb) can help alleviate muscle soreness.

The theories on why this works are myofascial release all the way to placebo via increasing your pain tolerance.

My consensus is that it works and 10-15 minutes of foam rolling (lacrosse ball too) after a session can alleviate soreness.

Compression Sleeves

These are personally my favorite post-leg day recovery protocol and if you have access, use them.

Like with most forms of recovery, it has to do with blood flow to the sore body part which will increase your body’s rate of recovery.

I personally only have access to the Normatec leg sleeves and use them for 20 minutes either after my leg sessions the day of, or the day after.

Cold Water Therapy

This comes with a HUGE caveat—this needs to be done at least 4-6 hours after training or you WILL stunt the anabolic processes from training and negatively impact muscle growth.

That being said, I go a step further and actually only do this on rest days.

The cold exposure will work by reducing inflammation in the affected muscle as well increasing blood flow and thus alleviate soreness.

5-10 minutes in cold water at least 6 hours after training can greatly reduce muscle soreness. I prefer a cold tub/ice bath, but you can do this in a shower.

Active Recovery

Active recovery is simply low impact exercise, things like biking or walking, that can get the blood flowing in our body.

This will help greatly alleviate soreness and quite simply it’s good for us.

20-45 minutes on our rest days will help us out and keep soreness at bay.

Supplements

I will first come out and say to avoid using Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen, advil, aleve, etc. around your training, similar to cold exposure.

These will blunt and negate the anabolic processes of training and diminish your muscle growth.

Curcumin acts similar to NSAIDs; however, much healthier and potentially even as effective. Curcumin should be taken as far away from training as possible for the above reasons, but can alleviate soreness. 200-400mg is a good dose for anti-inflammatory benefits.

Citrulline/Arginine are vasodilators which increase the blood flow in our body by relaxing our veins/arteries and allowing them to expand and thus allow more blood flow.

Again, blood carries nutrients, so the more blood flow we have, the more nutrient delivery we have.

Both of the supplements also increase of natural growth hormone production, so this will also, in some capacity, aid our recovery.

6-9g of either/or (I prefer citrulline) on rest days will help recovery and is very good for our cardiovascular health.

Another simple, effective supplement we can use is Epsom Salt. With the added benefit of the water being warm/hot, soaking in epsom salts can help to alleviate soreness, relax the body (PAS) and reduce our stress levels.

Putting It All Together

DOMS is inevitable, you will be sore at times, BUT we can take steps to largely avoid this and alleviate some of the pain.

New stimulus to the body is the main reason we will experience soreness. Things like being newer to training (or never trained), new movements and exercises being added to the workout, and/or switching up frequency, intensity, volume, etc. will greatly affect our recovery.

Soreness can also be an indication that we are doing something wrong—that our recovery is off or we are doing too much in the gym and training beyond our body’s recovery capabilities. Because of this, DOMS/soreness is NOT a good metric of muscle growth. It is either an indication that you did something new or that you did not recover properly.

Muscle growth will come from mechanical tension and progressive overload. The best metric of muscle growth will simply be things like hitting a new PR on a movement.

The best ways to mitigate DOMs will be getting adequate sleep, Proper Protein/Caloric Intake, Regular Massages and Foam Rolling, using Compression Sleeves, engaging in Cold Water Therapy, and Active Recovery. Then we of course have a supplement protocol we can follow: Cucrumin, Citrulline/Arginine, and Epsom Salt baths.

Looking Forward

Later today I will post a sort of Guide/Directory to this substack that will help point you in the right direction and categorize posts.

This will act as a “Start Here” guide and will be continuously updated and pinned to the top of the substack to help you navigate.

Saturday on the paid substack we will be going over developing a Healthy Relationship With Food, which is a post I know a lot of people will greatly benefit from. This can help fix issues with binge eating and allow greater freedom with your diet and lifestyle.