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Exercise

Muscle Soreness Relief List

July 12, 2009
By J White

If there is any type of intensity to your workout, then, from time to time, you will undoubtedly encounter muscle soreness. And even if your intensity is not that high, but you haven’t been exercising in a while, you should also expect to experience soreness in your muscles.

Of course, it goes without saying that you’ll want to find some relief from this soreness. Having to endure pain all day long is not something you look forward too. So, to help you to alleviate some of this pain, the following is a list of remedies that you can use to bring yourself some relief.

Muscle Soreness Relief List

Start Slow

The most sensible way to relieve soreness is to limit its occurrence as much as possible. The only way to do this is to start exercising slowly, especially if you haven’t exercised in a while.

If you have just joined a gym, don’t try to use every piece of equipment in one day. Instead, train different body parts on different days. And most importantly, start with light weights.

The same advice goes for jogging. If you are not a regular runner, then you don’t want to start out by trying to run a marathon. Even though it may be hard, resist the urge to initially start running. Instead, walk and build up your muscle endurance. This way you will later avoid walking around like you are 90 years old.

Massage the Pain

Part of the soreness comes from latic acid buildup and small tears in your muscle fibers. Massaging your muscles has been a long accepted way to help lessen these effects. Even though massaging will not stop the soreness from occurring, it will help speed up recovery time.

Take a Pill

Some pills, such as Tylenol and Advil act as anti-inflammatories. These pills can help calm inflammation and soreness to provide temporary relief. Just be sure not to take them on a regular basis since using them to often may cause damage to your health.

Stretch After Exercising

Many of you already know about the importance of stretching before you exercise, but far too many of you do not know about the importance of stretching after you exercise. Stretching afterwards helps to loosen up any tightness that occurs because of your exercise routine. Plus, because your muscles are already warm, you have more flexibility, which means you can better stretch and extend your muscles.

Hot and Cold Water

By taking a hot and cold shower, your blood vessels periodically open and close, which helps to increase oxygen and nutrient flow to the muscle fibers. There are many suggestions as to how long you should alternate between the hot and cold water. For starters, you can try a ratio of 2 to 1, cold to hot. That is, 1 minute, cold water, then 30 seconds hot. Do this up to 10 times.

Ice Bath

This is a tried a true method that has been used by many athletic trainers to help their players. You can place the ice and water in a bucket if you just need to ice around your legs, or you can use a tub if you want to ice your whole body. Plus, the water does not have to be near freezing. 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit (10 to 13 Celsius) should be fine. Plus, stay in the ice for no longer than 5 minutes.

Avoid Hot Tubs

Hot tubs will bring some temporary relief, but they can also increase the inflammation by increasing circulation to that area. In fact, this can lead to more muscle stiffness. If you use the heat treatment, stick with alternating between hot and cold.

Rest

The adage time heals all wounds is aptly appropriate when it comes to relieving muscle soreness. The above remedies can lessen the time the soreness stays with you, but only by allowing your body time to heal will the soreness completely subside.

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