Are you afraid to start exercising because of horrible shoelaces? Don’t you know how to avoid stiffness when you increase your exercise routine?
Soreness is muscle pain or stiffness in the muscles that can appear between one and two days after physical exercise. Its appearance occurs especially when starting to do physical exercise after periods of inactivity or for the first time, when radically increasing the exercise routine both in time and intensity, or when starting a new exercise routine.
If you want to know a little more about shoelaces and learn how to prevent shoelaces, keep reading this article from doncomos.com.
While you are exercising, pain or fatigue may arise, but this will be more intense than the pain of the laces, so you will be able to differentiate one pain from another. In addition, the pain of an injury such as a sprain will be much stronger and constant, you will also notice how the area becomes inflamed or even bruises appear. The sores usually appear in the legs and abdomen.
Although you can be alarmed by the pain of the shoelaces, you should not, since it is common. Soreness is the body’s way of responding to unusual exertion, so it can adapt to it and achieve greater strength and endurance, as well as recover better and create muscle hypertrophy, or muscle growth.
Symptoms
Normally the soreness begins to be noticed between 24 and 48 hours after doing physical exercise.
The characteristic symptoms of muscle soreness are muscle pain, muscle stiffness, and general fatigue and weakness. It is also possible that on the third day you notice even more intense pain, but this is normal. Don’t worry because the sores take between 5 and 7 days to disappear, regardless of whether you carry out a specific treatment.
What causes soreness
Although not completely verified, it is thought that soreness is caused by microscopic tears in muscle fibers. In addition, the intensity of the pain will depend on the time and the force performed in the physical exercise, as well as the type of exercise in question. You should know that performing any type of movement that is not routine can lead to the appearance of soreness.
It will be the eccentric muscle contractions that cause the most intense pain. These movements are what because the muscle to contract whiles it lengthen. Some types of these muscle contractions are found in the downward movement of squats, push-ups, going down stairs or running downhill. In addition, these exercises can cause small muscle tears, which would cause inflammation in the muscle and pain.
How to treat soreness
If you have played sports and you already feel the stiffness, surely you want to remedy it. In general, a specific treatment for soreness has not been agreed upon, but there are some tips that usually work, and experience has shown that they are effective.
As we already know, all people are not the same, so it is possible that your sores will not be reduced with just one of these tips, and you may need to use several treatments at the same time.
- Rest and recover. This can be a tedious and frustrating solution, but ignore them and just rest, do not do high intensity exercises and you will see how after a period of 3 to 7 days the soreness will have disappeared.
- Active recovery. This option is based on some proven studies of the effect of light aerobic exercise in reducing muscle soreness by increasing blood flow. That is why it is recommended that after performing intense exercise, you put this technique into practice and calm down little by little.
- Sports massages. Also based on some studies, it has been found that massages influence the reduction of muscle pain as well as the treatment of inflammation.
- Ice bath or contrast water bath. In this case, there are no studies to support it, but many professional athletes use this method and reliably state that it helps reduce pain.
- Do gentle stretches. After each training session, stretch your muscles for a few minutes.
- Take no steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. These medications like ibuprofen or aspirin can camouflage the pain but they will not really make the cure faster. Be careful, since it is not recommended to take them before exercising.
- Listen to your body. This should always be a first piece of advice, our body is wise, and it knows how far it can push itself and pushes itself to the limit in each situation, so listen to your body and avoid doing any exercise that increases pain.
- If you have already been through laces, think about them the next time you go to do intense exercise, etc. and put prevention into practice.
How to prevent soreness
Can shoelaces be prevented? Yes. Since soreness occurs due to sudden changes in intensity or force, we will focus on what produces them to prepare the body and learn to adapt to the different forces that the body will exert. Hence, it is essential to perform a gradual warm-up before starting the training.
Some people claim that stretching also prevents soreness, but the results of studies have confirmed that stretching does not have any benefit in preventing muscle soreness.
Here are some tips to help you prevent muscle pain and stiffness that physical exercise can cause.
- Full warm-up. Before each session it is important that you warm up the body, working on the joints and muscles, in this way the body prepares for what comes next. After training you should also calm down little by little.
- Slow progressive increase in exercise. Herein lays the main key to avoiding shoelaces. You must make the increases in time and intensity little by little, gradually, so that the body adapts slowly and painlessly.
- Don’t make sudden changes in your workouts. You should keep this in mind during your training sessions; you should avoid going from extreme intensity exercises to very calm ones suddenly.
- Do gentle stretches. At the end of your training session, remember to spend some time stretching all your muscles. Do it calmly and in the time indicated for each stretch.
- Have a percent rule. This rule used in sports training indicates that you should not increase the time and intensity more than 10 percent in a week when you are starting a new activity.
With these simple tips, you now know what soreness is and how to avoid soreness, so start prevention in your next workout so you don’t have to go through that annoying muscle pain again. Remember that if the pain is too intense or has not disappeared after 7 days; see a doctor because you could have a more serious muscle injury.