Starting Strength

do with it.
    Soreness is usually produced when the body does something to which it is not adapted. A good example of this would be your first workout if it’s not properly managed. Another example would be your first workout after a long layoff, which can, if handled incorrectly, produce some of the most exquisite soreness a human can experience. Anytime you change a workout program, either by increasing volume or intensity or by changing exercises, soreness normally results.
    The onset of the perception of soreness is normally delayed, anywhere from 12 to 48 hours, depending on the age and conditioning level of the athlete, the nature of the exercise being done, and the volume and intensity of the exercise. For this reason, it is referred to in the exercise literature as DOMS, or delayed-onset muscle soreness . Many people have observed that certain muscle groups get sore faster and more acutely than others, and that certain exercises tend to produce soreness, while others, even when done at a high level of exertion, produce very little.
    The part of the rep that causes most of the soreness is the eccentric, or “negative,” phase of the contraction, where the muscle is lengthening under the load rather than shortening. The eccentric contraction probably causes most of the soreness because of the way the components of the contractile mechanism in the muscle fibers are stressed as they stretch apart under a load. And this explains why some exercises produce more soreness than others. Exercises without a significant eccentric component, like the power clean, in which the weight is dropped rather than actively lowered, will not produce nearly the soreness that the squat will. Squats, benches, presses, deadlifts, and many assistance and ancillary exercises have both an eccentric and concentric component, where the muscles involved both lengthen and shorten under load. Some sports activities, like cycling, are entirely concentric, since all aspects of pedaling involve the shortening of the muscles involved. Cycling and exercises like sled pulling or pushing can therefore be trained very hard without causing much, if any, soreness. Since soreness is an inflammatory process, the harder an athlete can train without producing high amounts of muscle inflammation and the attendant unfriendly hormonal responses, the better that is for recovery. Exercise methods that produce very high levels of soreness as a constant feature of the program – due to random exercise selection that precludes adaptation to the stress – can contribute to long-term systemic inflammation, the kind that produces poor health instead of fitness and strength. Soreness is an unavoidable part of training, but it should not be sought after as a primary objective and worn as a badge of honor for its own sake.
    Occasional acute soreness, unless it is extreme, is no impediment to training. In fact, many records have been set by sore athletes. If you are not training hard enough to produce occasional soreness, and are therefore not having to train while sore, you are not training very hard. Waiting until soreness subsides before doing the next workout is a good way to guarantee that soreness will be produced every time, since you’ll never get adapted to sufficient workload frequency to stop getting sore. Extreme soreness that interferes with the normal range of motion must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, and you will need to decide whether to train through the soreness after you have warmed up carefully and thoroughly. But in general, if the warm-up returns the movement to the normal range of motion, you can do the workout. Some alterations in programming and recovery strategies might have to be made if it is determined that the soreness is the result of an accumulated lack of recovery from the preceding several workouts.
    In contrast to normal soreness, which by its nature is delayed for several hours after the workout, an injury can be defined as something that happens to the body that causes pain in a way that is not the normal consequence of a correctly performed exercise. An acute injury is immediately perceived as pain or discomfort in an identifiable structure and persists after the movement has stopped. The injury could be a disruption of the structure of a muscle belly, tendon, or ligament, or, less commonly, of an intervertebral disc, a knee meniscus, or an articular cartilage. Most training-associated injuries affect the soft tissues;