Why is muscle sore after exercise?

2011 10/14

Muscle soreness mostly occurs after increasing the intensity of exercise, or after doing unusual physical exercises. According to the time of symptoms, it can be divided into two categories.One is immediate muscle soreness, which can be felt during or immediately after the completion of fitness. Symptoms include muscle stiffness, swelling, pain and so on. These symptoms will be relieved in a few hours until they disappear. The other is delayed onset muscle soreness. Symptoms are similar to the first one, but they don't occur immediately after exercise. It takes about 24 hours for them to begin feeling soreness, and peaks 72 hours later. It begins with soreness that is limited to the part of the body that participates in the exercise, then begins to spread, and lasts for 5 to 7 days before it completely disappears.

sore

When the human body is exercising vigorously, it not only takes aerobic breathing, but also takes anaerobic breathing (at this time, the energy provided by aerobic breathing is not enough for human consumption). Anaerobic respiration produces lactic acid, while lactic acid is acidic. The body absorbs lactic acid relatively slowly, leaving most of it in the body, so muscles feel sore. The causes of muscle soreness include muscle spasm, minor muscle trauma, connective tissue injury, inflammatory reaction and electrolyte loss. They affect each other, and most muscle soreness is caused by the above reasons alone or in combination. Aching begins when muscles are pulled during exercise. When the functional units are destroyed, calcium ions accumulate in the cells, making the function of more muscle segments decrease. Thus increasing the burden of surrounding connective tissue, leading to inflammatory reaction, producing inflammatory cells and cytokine.

To relieve muscle soreness, cold compress and hot compress should be applied first. In order to alleviate the muscle pain caused by sports contusion and pull injury, the first step should be to apply cold compress to the pain area every 4-6 hours for 20 minutes each time. After two or three days of cold compress, the muscle tension and pain can be greatly relieved, then hot compress therapy should be taken in time, so that the muscle can completely eliminate the feeling of pain. Hot compress therapy is best able to do 3 times a day, 20 minutes each time.

The most effective way to prevent muscle soreness is to warm up adequately and improve muscle flexibility and elasticity before exercising. Proper stretching after exercise can relax muscles, assist lactic acid and other substances metabolism, and accelerate tissue repair. You can also supplement whey protein and carbohydrate to repair muscle. In addition, wearing compression protectors during fitness can stabilize muscles and joints.It can reduce excess muscle swaying and energy consumption, effectively deal with muscle soreness and improve sports performance at the same time.

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