If you’ve ever picked up a weight and swung it around a few times you’ll inevitably wake up the following day thinking, “Oh my God, I can hardly move…”
This is known as Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS). Presenting itself 24 to 72 hours after exercise, it’s most commonly seen in people who are new to training or those who have been inactive for long periods of time (MacIntyre, DL. et al. 1995).
For individuals new to training, waking up in pain often has negative connotations and can be worrying, especially if you aren’t made aware of it and if you don’t understand the mechanics behind it.
Nevertheless, for those of us who are regular gym-goers we relish the pain and look forward to the prospect of waking up sore, as for us it’s a psychological indictor of a good session and hard work.
Now it may be an indicator for us psychologically, but what about physiologically? Can we use muscle soreness (DOMS) as a gauge to reliably indicate how successful our workout was?
Well to answer this we should first need to define what DOMS is and why it occurs.
Originally, DOMS was thought to be caused by a build-up of lactic acid and metabolic waste that comes from training, but this has now largely been refuted. Although the exact mechanism still isn’t well understood, we do know DOMS is brought about through unaccustomed eccentric muscle action, causing a disruption of connective and/or contractile tissue (Cheung, K. 2003).
It is not a singular mechanism but rather a result of several mechanisms beginning with micro-trauma, and followed by an inflammatory response in the muscle (Lewis, PB. 2012).
In short, DOMS is an inflammatory response to tiny tears (micro-trauma) in the connective tissue caused by training.
It’s worth noting exercises that emphasise the eccentric contraction of a lift will have the greatest influence on DOMS, more so than concentric or isometric contractions (Faulkner, JA. 1993).
Why DOMS manifests itself as pain remains somewhat unclear, it may be attributed to some form of self-protection mechanism to prevent further damage, as DOMS has been shown to impair force output for up to 24 hours following exercise, as well as altering walking and running biomechanics (Paschalis, C. et al. 2007) (Vila-Chã, C. et al. 2012).
This is one of the reasons we tend to discourage people from training the same muscle group two days in a row, and rather have a rest day or perform a split-body routine.
So, knowing that DOMS is a response caused by trauma and damage to a muscle, can we be right in thinking that DOMS leads to more muscle growth and a sign of a great workout?
Well no, as I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple.
Yes, there’s a strong correlation between DOMS and exercise-induced muscle damage. However, when we’re looking to build muscle (hypertrophy) there are three key mechanisms we need to factor in: mechanical tension, metabolic stress muscle damage.
Muscle damage does lead to hypertrophy but it’s only part of the puzzle, as hypertrophy can still occur without it, via mechanisms one and two – mechanical tension and metabolic stress. (Schoenfeld B. 2010).
A recent paper published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning stated:
“Although DOMS may provide a general indication that some degree of damage to muscle tissue has occurred, it cannot be used as a definitive measure of the phenomenon,”
and then went on to conclude:
“It remains debatable as to whether DOMS is an accurate gauge of muscle damage.” (Schoenfeld B, Contreras B. 2013).
So, although DOMS may provide some indication of muscle damage, it’s definitely not a reliable indicator and it won’t always reflect the magnitude of the damage, or occur at all.
If you’re using your ‘soreness’ as way to measure whether you’ve had a productive session then you need to think again, as studies have shown that even after a single bout of exercise DOMS can be significantly reduce in subsequent sessions (Nosaka, K. 2001), and these effects persist for at least several weeks (Clarkson, PM. 1992).
This would explain why soreness is common at the beginning of a new programme or to someone who’s new to exercise, but eases as time goes by.
My take home message:
DOMS is a result of training and is something we should neither be worried about nor obsess over.
As handy as it would be to use DOMS as a way of measuring your workout’s productiveness, it’s both unreliable and terribly inaccurate.
It’s also worth mentioning that certain techniques such as foam rolling (as I discussed last week) can reduce DOMS, along with adequate sleep, nutritional intake and supplementation - protein post workout has proven to be effective in reducing DOMS post-exercise (Shimomura Y. 2010) along with the consumption of caffeine prior to training, another win for coffee lovers! (Hurley CF. 2013).