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Feeling sore after the gym is strangely satisfying, as anyone who has found themselves prodding at their tender quads or announcing “I’m sooooo sore” to anyone who will listen can attest. (It’s okay, we’ve all done it.) So, naturally, you may assume that if you’re not sore after your workout, it was a flop. But you don’t necessarily need to hit the gym harder next time— and you really shouldn’t be struggling to wash your hair in the shower after a heavy shoulder day.
Delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS, is a symptom that happens after damage to muscle tissue, says Brad Schoenfeld, PhD, CSCS, professor of exercise science at Lehman College. It feels like “palpable muscle soreness in the muscle bellies that hurts to touch, and most likely to move,” says John Rusin, DPT, physical therapist, personal trainer, and founder of Pain Free Performance. Usually, you’ll start feeling it about 24 hours after exercise and it can last up to 72 hours.
Why Do I Feel Sore?
While the jury is still out on why exactly DOMS happens, Schoenfeld says that it may be a survival mechanism. “You’re challenging your body beyond its present state, which causes an adaptation. We can hypothesize that when there’s some type of mild damage, the body wants to prevent that,” he says. “So it’s going to try to get stronger and reinforce its structure to prevent this from happening in the future.”
It is most commonly associated with eccentric movements (the phase where the muscle lengthens, like when lowering a dumbbell during a bicep curl). But people can experience DOMS after performing any novel exercise or movement. “Are you doing a brand new exercise you’ve never done? That will lead to soreness due to basically insulting tissues that haven’t been insulted that way before in a whole new, different way,” says Rusin. This could be a new exercise entirely (like adding bulgarian split squats instead of standard squats) or it could be chasing a new range of motion (like subbing in “ass-to-grass” squats).
You could also get sore after increasing your intensity of volume. “Intensity is how hard or heavy you are training,” says Rusin, “While volume is how much work you are doing. We could look at it as like a rep by rep standpoint or a set by set standpoint.” However, Schoenfeld notes that soreness doesn’t express the same way in everybody: Some people are more prone to getting DOMS, and others, less so—possibly due to genetics.
Is Being Sore Good?
Both experts agree that you shouldn’t be using soreness as an exercise goal or sign of progress. But DOMS has been positively correlated with muscle hypertrophy. “I think that if you do experience a little mild soreness, it may be a good indicator of growth,” says Schoenfeld. However, you don’t need to be sore to develop your muscles. When Rusin creates a training block with four to six weeks of the same weekly exercises, he tends to see that people get stronger and less sore at the same time.
