Myth Buster: No Muscle Sorness Means Bad Workout

By Ron McDonald Jr. - CPT

I was recently asked by a client "Why my muscles aren't getting as sore after recent workouts. Does that mean I didn't have a good workout?" This seems to be a common misconception as people tend to equate muscle soreness with workout effectiveness. I guess all that heavy breathing, sweat, crying, and funny walking during and afterwards isn't enough anymore. Huh?

The truth is that muscle sorness isn't a good indicator of a good workout. Muscle soreness generally occurs when you make your muscles do something that they just aren't used to doing or haven't done in a while. When you first start working out you will experience the most soreness. Forget about the next day... you were probably sore for the entire next week! But then as your body gradually gets more accustomed to what you're doing, your body gradually experiences less and less muscle soreness until it reaches the point where you are barely sore or even not sore at all. In addition it also has a lot to do with the specific activity such as resistance training where you will generally get more soreness do to the demand and stress on the muscle fibers, specific in the lengthening phase of the muscle. However remember the goal in the workout is to burn calories, elevate metabolism, and make progress, not to get sore. I mean if you want to get sore - just find a brick wall and run into it a couple of times. Now is that a good workout. I don't think so.

So, muscle soreness is not a indicator of a good or bad workout. It just indicates that you did something different in some way. Use other way to gauge your progress such as body fat analysis, a mirror, those jeans you are trying fit into, pictures, circumference measurements and/or workout log to judge whether or not what you're doing is actually working.

Good try though at getting out of your the next workout, but I will see you at the gym. Oh you want soreness do you...

Be Well.

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