Soreness vs. Pain … What’s the Difference?
We all know that physical activity benefits your physical, mental and social health. Exercise improves sleep, helps you maintain strong muscles and bones and may prevent or improve chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, obesity and depression. Along with the benefits though, you can expect some discomfort after pushing your body to do more than usual. When you exercise, you are putting healthy stress on your heart, lungs, muscles and bones to gain strength or endurance. This good stress can cause normal muscle soreness and fatigue and is a sign that you did something to improve your health and strength.
MUSCLE SORENESS
Exercise soreness sometimes results from starting to use muscles that you have not used stressfully in a long time. Called delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), this soreness is a result of small, un-harmful “tearing / stress” on these unused muscle fibers. As the body repairs these small tears, muscles become stronger. Short-term muscle soreness is a healthy and expected result of exercise. Normal muscle soreness and fatigue peak between 24 and 72 hours after a muscle stressing activity. It generally goes away on its own after a few days.
The amount of soreness you have will depend on the time and intensity of your exercise. It will also depend on whether or not the activity was new to you as it can take longer for your body to adapt to new activities. During the recovery period when you have soreness, it is important to:
- Give the muscles you worked time to recover … you are more likely to get injured if you continue with the same intensity and type of exercise too soon;
- Stay active and keep moving until the soreness decreases or goes away . . . DOMS often improves with easy stretching and light movement. CAUTION – total rest can increase soreness. Consider doing your activity at a lower intensity or for less time.
- Vary your activities . . . work your legs, arms and whole body on different days. This will help you keep moving and strengthen other muscles while allowing the sore ones to rest.
PAIN
Pain usually occurs in a specific body part like a tendon or a joint. It can be more intense and more constant than muscle soreness. It may vary from a constant “ache” (even without movement) or you may feel sharp pain during movement or exercise or afterward with a particular movement. Pain may cause your muscles to become stiff if you sit for too long, may keep you up at night or may change how you move (i.e. limp or favor one shoulder over the other).
It is important to remember that pain is personal and the degree of injury does not always equal the amount of pain you may feel. If you do have pain:
- Stop the activity causing you pain or change what you are doing … ice can provide short term relief for pain caused by inflammation;
- Don’t push through the pain . . . pushing through the pain can cause the problem to get worse and lead to further injury;
- Seek help from your doctor or physical therapist . . . physical therapists finds the root cause of your symptoms and work to decrease your pain, increase your strength and increase your flexibility. Remember, studies have consistently shown that people who choose physical therapy first have better outcomes, lower healthcare costs and are less likely to have surgery or use opioids.
HOW TO PROGRESS
To make physical improvements, your body needs to do more than usual but you must make sure you increase your activity safely and slowly over time. To do so:
- Add new activities or increase intensity, distance, speed or weight little by little … too much too soon is a recipe for injury;
- Start back slowly after time away … if you have been injured, sick or busy with “life”, your activity threshold may be lower. Therefore, do not restart the activity at your previous level but instead work toward a gradual return to the distance, intensity or duration you were at before your break;
- Give your muscles time to recover between intense activities … you will get more benefits with slow steady progress than from pushing yourself too hard too quickly.
Still not sure if you are experiencing soreness or pain, your friends at Chiron Physical Therapy are here to help. Open 300+ days for your convenience, your Chiron family can assess your strengths and weaknesses, develop a safe progressive program to help you reach your goals, educate you on how to prevent injuries and of course help you to recover from injury.