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Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness
Dec. 17th, 2006 11:50 amI have discovered the official term for when your muscles ache after exercise: "delayed onset muscle soreness" or DOMS. This term reminds me of the terms I had to memorize while majoring in psychology, the worst being the "TOT phenomenon," which occurs when you can't quite remember something but it's on the tip of your tongue. It seemed as though since psychology was a young science, and therefore hadn't yet accumulated many facts, they tried to disguise this by creating terms a layman wouldn't understand instead of using plain English. This way they would sound more scholarly and blah blah gag me.
And like many psychology concepts, DOMS is one of those things that everyone's experienced, but no one understands. People used to think it was caused by lactic acid build-up, but now it seems more likely due to the process of repairing the muscle (see the Wikipedia entry on DOMS).
People can't agree whether you should use ice or not. Or heat. Exercising while still sore may or may not be a good idea. Massaging sore muscles may or may not help.
That research I read recently about carbs plus protein being a good idea within an hour of exercising apparently found that a certain ratio of carbs to protein (3:1 or 4:1) is the best thing to have. And fats and fiber make things worse. So eating peanut butter or nuts (protein plus fat, but no carbs) is not ideal. And the carbs should be simple carbs. Chocolate milk made from skim milk is recommended.
According to Sports Injury Bulletin's interpretation of a paper, doing the same exercise again within one to six weeks is a good idea. I find this very surprising. My experience has been that doing something only once a week means you ache every single time. It's as if you tear the muscle; rebuild it stronger, faster, better; and then the body says, "Whew! I guess we don't have to do that again!" and lets it disintegrate back to its original starting point all within a week. I've always felt that I had to do something at least twice a week to get my muscles used to it.
**
As for me, I do ache from yesterday, but except for some tiny muscles at the top of my right leg, it's much, much better than last week. It feels better than usual to stretch, but it doesn't hurt to just walk around. For whatever reason, nuts work for me. I may try some chocolate milk or hot chocolate in a thermos next time and see what happens.
And like many psychology concepts, DOMS is one of those things that everyone's experienced, but no one understands. People used to think it was caused by lactic acid build-up, but now it seems more likely due to the process of repairing the muscle (see the Wikipedia entry on DOMS).
People can't agree whether you should use ice or not. Or heat. Exercising while still sore may or may not be a good idea. Massaging sore muscles may or may not help.
That research I read recently about carbs plus protein being a good idea within an hour of exercising apparently found that a certain ratio of carbs to protein (3:1 or 4:1) is the best thing to have. And fats and fiber make things worse. So eating peanut butter or nuts (protein plus fat, but no carbs) is not ideal. And the carbs should be simple carbs. Chocolate milk made from skim milk is recommended.
According to Sports Injury Bulletin's interpretation of a paper, doing the same exercise again within one to six weeks is a good idea. I find this very surprising. My experience has been that doing something only once a week means you ache every single time. It's as if you tear the muscle; rebuild it stronger, faster, better; and then the body says, "Whew! I guess we don't have to do that again!" and lets it disintegrate back to its original starting point all within a week. I've always felt that I had to do something at least twice a week to get my muscles used to it.
**
As for me, I do ache from yesterday, but except for some tiny muscles at the top of my right leg, it's much, much better than last week. It feels better than usual to stretch, but it doesn't hurt to just walk around. For whatever reason, nuts work for me. I may try some chocolate milk or hot chocolate in a thermos next time and see what happens.