Sore Muscles? Here’s How to Get Relief
Anyone who’s active will, at some point, experience sore muscles. This is especially true if you’re trying a new type of workout, working out for longer than usual, or increasing the intensity of your activity.
“Muscle soreness is caused by micro tears and inflammation in the muscle and is a response to physical stress from exercise,” says Kyle Gonzalez,NSCA, CSCS, CES, FMS lvl 1, a performance coach at Future, an app that pairs users with a remote fitness coach. “The micro tears, increased blood flow, and inflammation cause mild swelling, which make pain receptors more sensitive to movement. Soreness is a natural process, but without the right guidance it can be debilitating and lead to injury.” This brings up a very important point: always listen to your body! Here are six different ways to help relieve muscle soreness and speed up the recovery process so you can get back to feeling good as new.
Active recovery: Soreness can last 24 hours or it can be a few days before you feel back to yourself. While you’re recovering it doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t keep working out, but you might want to take it easier, think: doing an active recovery with lower-intensity exercise like a good walk versus a difficult HIIT class.
Excerpted from Real Simple
