Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is that feeling you get when you've worked out for the first time in a long time or overworked to your capacity. It's that feeling that your arms or legs feel like they are about to explode when you go to use them. It's that feeling that your legs feel like 100 pounds each - going up or down stairs. It's that feeling that when you wake up in the morning you feel like you're still lifting the weights from the day before.
Any of us who have worked out from one time to another have experienced this pain. So what exactly is this soreness and where does it come from? Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is that feeling that comes on a day or two after the workout. It's been around since the caveman and cave woman...it was studied in the early 1900's and it continues to draw attention from the scientific community. Popular theories have been that the pain is due to a buildup of lactic acid and that has shown more recently to be Dead WRONG! This has been the prevailing thoughts since I first read about 20 years ago. The problem is that blood lactate levels rise during intense exercise however the lactate levels begin to decrease and return to normal between 30 and 60 minutes post exercise.
What is causing the intense soreness two days later? There may be two causes. One being a high concentration of (+) positive charged calcium ions left over from the rise in lactic acid. This caused a positively charged area and can drop the normal level of blood entering in and out of the area. Blood is responsible for transporting oxygen to the muscle tissue and also carries toxins away from the damaged area. If the damaged area is positively charged then the cells can't properly communicate to one another. When communication is reduced between the cells blood flow is altered reducing oxygen. Without the normal flow of blood in and out of the area toxins are not taken away properly causing a back up.
The second reason is that studies have shown damage to the connective tissue structure of the muscle. This connective tissue damage includes the fascia and connective tissue matrix (the substance that binds the cells together). When the muscle and by products break down there is a breakdown of protein. This can cause cellular inflammation which can cause an increase of scar tissue build up (again positively charged) as well as increased metabolic activity including a rise in temperature. When this process advances, local receptor sites responsible for pain become excited - beginning the delayed response.
So as you can see even though lactic acid is returned to normal within 24 hours the pain from extensive training can't be directly linked to lactic acid. If the two were linked together then it would be expected that you should be sore within hours of working out...not 72 hours after. According to Jay Schroeder, "Muscles are in a constant battle between anabolism and catabolism.
(Anabolism: Anabolism, or biosynthesis, is the process by which living organisms synthesize complex molecules of life from simpler ones.)
(Catabolism: is the breakdown of large molecules down to small molecules)
(Together both anabolism and catabolism equals your metabolism)
It is the ability to keep them on the anabolic side that is the goal of training. One method to assist this is to stimulate one's muscles through proper exercise; training one's muscles while in an eccentrically elongated (properly lengthened) state. This is traumatic, as exercise is always supposed to be executed at a higher level than what one is currently able to recover from in order to initiate adaptation processes. One of the benefits of this kind of exercise is that the resulting damage to the muscle fibers stimulates the release of growth hormone during pre REM sleep. In order to take maximal advantage of this, one would not like to resolve this soreness for 24 - 36 hours after its onset. [Typically 3 - 8 hours after completion of a proper stimulating exercise plan.]"
No comments:
Post a Comment