Everyone gets sore after a workout. It’s often what’s down as delay onset muscle soreness and it’s a natural part of the healing process. After all, exercise breaks down your muscles and they get stronger as they repair. What if, however, that pain’s getting more acute and it’s lasting way longer than it should? Here, we’ll look at what might be making exercise all the achier and what you can do to manage it.
Give your body to the prep work it needs
Your muscles stretch with physical activity, and it helps them get a better range of motion. If you don’t take the time to let them stretch, then it increases the likelihood that you’ll pull them instead. How do you stretch your muscles, then? By doing a warm-up in front of the routine, of course. Similarly, make sure that you cool down and do yoga stretches both before and after your workout to prevent your muscles from getting caught in an awkward and painful position.
Look out for your joints
One place that you shouldn’t be feeling too much pain is in your joints. This isn’t the natural pain of exercise, but rather inflammation. There’s no benefit of inflammation, it’s just painful. You can take supplements like CBD to fight inflammation. What is CBD? Effectively, it’s the non-psychoactive component of the hemp family of plants, but the cannabinoid has also become a popular method of fighting joint pain, especially in the exercise world. There are also anti-inflammatory foods, like garlic, that you can add to your diet as well.
Watch out for high-impact exercises
If you are dealing with the pain of inflammation at the moment, then it’s important to know that your joints could take a little care to get back to their normal painless selves. As such, you should avoid exacerbating those aches for a while. Make sure you’re not pushing yourself too hard and keep an eye out for low-impact ways of exercising instead. For instance, cycling is much lower impact than jogging because your feet aren’t repeatedly hitting a hard surface, sending the shocks up to your joints. Before too long, you should hopefully be able to return your routine to normal.
Improve your circulation
Both the healing process of your muscles and the pain of inflammation can be aided by improving the blood flow in your body, helping oxygen and protein travel more freely throughout. Similarly, many people experience swelling and numbness, especially after exercises like long runs, which can also be a sign of bad circulation. If any of those concerns apply to you, then trying sports compression gear could be just what you need. This aids circulation and can also reduce that aforementioned inflammation.
Most important of all is that you listen to your body when you’re working out. If you feel like parts of your body are getting worryingly tight during a rep or exercise, take a break. Your body knows the difference between the standard aches of exercise and when things are at risk of getting more serious.
