Soreness and moving on after

You caught me red handed. After a tough workout, I’m just as prone to laying my sore butt on the couch for the entire following day. Although I know some activity would do me good, it’s much easier to accept keeping your hurt parts stationary instead.

However, after stealing some classic abs & legs of steal videos from my mom’s collection, I felt the need to release some of that built up acid from my hurtin’ muscles. One of my favorite methods to workout out some post workout woes is to hit the pool. The water keeps all pressure off your body. Be it a few laps, or just some floating, surrounding yourself in the water is relaxing and allows your body to stretch in different ways that the couch can’t quite handle.

Another great tip is to get some low impact work done. Head out for a walk with your family or friends, or watch your favorite show while stretching. If all else fails, get yourself going on a house clean or laundry. It’ll get you moving despite the soreness and get tasks accomplished as well.

If heading to any form of organized fitness activity is out of the question (which I can very much understand), hop in the bath or take a long shower. Despite a quick shower to get ready in the morning, I jumped back into the tub later that night, paying special attention to self massage the hurt areas. Working out the soreness yourself can get deeper than stretching, and also connects you to your body at a deeper level than normal.

No matter what your case of soreness is, find some joy in the fact that the pain is a sign of your body reacting to the hard work you’re putting in, and keep at it!

Soreness vs. Exercise Injury

Recognizing soreness from an exercise injury is important for anyone involved with a workout regime.

A general rule of thumb is that soreness will come on the day after a workout, where as you're more prone to feel an exercise induced injury right away or soon afterwards.

An injury may may feel like a pressure or pinching pain. Soreness is more likely to leave your muscles feeling stiff and tight. The difference comes from how you deal with the pain.

If you feel sore, it's best to keep working out. This article specifically discusses the feeling of soreness as a sign of your muscles growing stronger. If you think you may have an injury instead of normal soreness, you may want to consider taking some time off from exercises incorporating the injured area.

If pain persists after a few days, consider talking to a doctor. To prevent both soreness and injury, it's important to stretch before and after workouts.

For help with treating muscle aches, this site does a great job of determining between ice and heat therapy.

Video: Exercise injuries

The more active you are, the greater ability you have to fight off illness, diseases and cancers. However, active lifestyles increase the odds that you may pull a muscle, or form a exercise related injury. Injuries can keep you off your feet for a few days up to a few weeks, depending on the extent of the ailment.

If you're not regularly stretching before and after workouts, you could be at a higher risk for muscle cramps later on. Check out my post on dealing with muscle cramps as well. Here's the videojug library on preventing injuries. The site does a good job of covering everything from cramping, sports prevention massage, increasing your flexibility to warming up and cooling down techniques.

Core Muscles

Your core is a group of muscles in the center of your body that often used in addition with other muscles for various activities. You can imagine then, the stronger your core, the harder you will be able to work other areas of your body over overall strength, balance and agility.

Unfortunately, the core has gone ignored for so long, mostly because working it alone will not produce overwhelmingly visible results. Signs of a strong core will come in the ease of completing other exercises or an increased sense of endurance in activity. Dancers and yoga participants especially practice core strengthening through all of their activity and often stay fit, have better posture, and are more agile than their peers.

Your core muscles include your abdomen, back, pelvis and hips. Core muscles often lay underneath other muscles (hence not being able to see a noticeable difference when doing core workouts).

In short, adding some core routine into your workout will benefit all other areas of your workout. A strong core will protect you from putting too much work on other muscles and prevent injury. Even better, most core exercises can be done at home with little or no equipment. Within the next few posts, I'll try to include a few sites or tips on exercises that will specifically strengthen your core, make sure to look for them!

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