Causes of sore muscles

Simon Gama

Causes of sore muscles after work out: Its calcium that damages muscle fibre and brings on pain. Muscle soreness, the acting sensation in your muscles that you feel one or two days after a workout is familiar to even novice weight lifters.

You get sore when you haven’t lifted recently or when you push a little harder than usual in your workout. In the past a variety of explanations have been offered to explain delayed or on set muscle soreness. For years lactic acid build-up was identified as the cause. With the advent of sophisticated chemical tests and electron microscopes, researchers discovered that delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS)  was actually caused by damage to the muscle fibres.

DOMS seems to occur during eccentric muscle contractions in which muscle exert force as they lengthen. For example when you lift the bar to your chest shoulder and arm muscles are contracting eccentrically. You can exert much more force eccentrically as the muscle lengthens than centrically when the muscle shortens. 50-100% more when the force is severe enough or when the muscle is stressed often the fibres become injured. Fibre injury sets off a series of events that cause your muscles to ache a day or two after the weight workout. When you injure the muscle fibre calcium leaks into the fibre from calcium storage areas.

Like snakebite
Calcium is very important in muscle function. It stimulates the fibre to contract but it rapidly pumps back into the calcium storage area after the contraction is completed. After a muscle injury calcium accumulates in the fibre and causes the release of substances called proteases that cause muscle fibre and causes the release of substances called proteases that cause muscle fibre break down. One of the proteases is called PLAZ which is the active chemical in some snake venom. In many ways the cellular effects of snakebite are similar to those occurring in the muscle fibres during delayed onset muscle soreness.

In addition to deterioration of the muscle fibres parts of the fibre involved in contraction i.e. the sarcomere often develop contractures that contribute to the pain. Contractures are muscle spasms that cause discomfort and decrease performance capacity. The proteases cause the break down and deterioration of part of the muscle fibre.

The body initiates a clean-up phase that rids the muscle cells then produce stress proteins that protect the cell from further injury.

That’s why you don’t get sore after every workout. Stress proteins protect the cell from further mechanical damage unless you have a particularly heavy workout. Then you get sore all over again. If you stop working out the stress proteins in the muscle decrease and you lose your protection against soreness little is known about these stress proteins but some scientists think they are very important in developing muscle strength.

Dealing with muscle soreness
You will never rid your life of muscle sciences completely as long as you lift weights. However, excessive soreness is not good for your progress. When you are sore it often takes many days before you recover adequately. You may be prevented from doing the kind of work outs that lead to big gains. Scientists have not as yet determined effective techniques for preventing sciences but several techniques appear promising. These techniques attempt to check the processes that we know are involved in muscle injury and the resulting muscle sciences. These DOMs processes include intense muscle contractions particularly eccentric contractions that damage the muscle fibre. Accumulation of calcium in the muscle fibre, muscle spasm, inflammation and repair of the fibre following injury.

How muscles get sore: Heavy unaccustomed weight training session with eccentric muscle contractions. Muscle fibre injury cause calcium leakage into muscle fibres. Calcium caused release of substances that break down muscle fibre. Body clears cell of dead tissue. Fibre regenerates and becomes more resistant to further stress

Train smart
The most obvious preventable measure is to have a well-structured program that stresses your muscles gradually. Sudden severe workouts lead to injury. The downtime from monster workouts usually exceeds any benefits that may be accrued.

Muscle physiologists strongly suspect that you must develop protective proteins that largely spare you from further pain and help you progress optimally. Your muscles need time to get used to heavy loads you can’t do it in one workout.

Repair of the fibre
A relatively new area of interest in sports physiology is  to speed up tissue treating after an injury. Diet may play an important part in helping you to recover from muscle soreness and injury. For the most part athletes take in all the protein they need in the diets. However, when weight lifters are beginning a new program or during periods of heavy training many studies have shown that protein intake is often inadequate. As noted taking a protein supplement an increasing the protein content of the diet may be appropriate when you’re pushing hard.

Dietary carbohydrates are also important. Research has shown that recovery from muscle injury is delayed when the muscles carbohydrates stores that i glycogen are inadequate. The best way to ensure adequate carbohydrates stores is to maintain a high carbohydrate content in the diet and to get adequate rest between workouts. Vitamin E is thought to combat the destructive actions of substances called free radicals. Finally many studies have suggested that muscle soreness is accompanied by inflammation that the same as what occurs after a sprained ankle or muscle pull.

Theoretically taking medications such as Advil or aspirin should help combat inflammation. Unfortunately the few studies that have been done show these agents are not effective for preventing DOMS.

We are only beginning to understand why muscles get sore after weight training. Many techniques I have suggested are unproven but show great promise.

In many event these techniques are harmless and may prevent some of the pain at delays onset of muscle soreness. — Additional information from online sources.

The writer, Simon Gama is a fitness trainer at Body Works Gym in Bulawayo.