Soreness: Train Through It or Take a Day Off? (Blog)

[Mehdi]

Use this thread to discuss the next post from StrongLifts.com's blog:

Soreness: Train Through It or Take a Day Off?

[hibikijoji]

Thanks again. Good refresher.

Any chance of doing an article about overtraining?

[paul]

i thought soreness was caused by either microtears in the muscles or lactic acid build ups

[Mehdi]

@hibikijoji
Tnx. Overtraining maybe.

@Paul
You know I prefer focussing on application. Plenty of sites that do the theoretical stuff.

[BAZzy]

Kelly Baggett has written a good article on over-training. As Kelly indicates in the article, over-reaching is often confused with over-training. A link to the article follows.

To supplement my weight training program, I row around 15,000 metres in two sessions each day. I find this helps supplement my strength (weight) training and assists greatly in the recovery process as it provides an ‘active’ recovery. I lift Monday/Wednesday/Friday and row every day. I have used this approach over a long sample period and find that it works perfectly for me, with good progress and gains made on both the strength training, and rowing.

Great article, thanks Mehdi.

http://www.higher-faster-sports.com/PlannedOvertraining.html

[gargoyle]

I'll jump in a say that in general, I agree with the above assessment. If you are a bit sore, work out. If you are a lot sore, work out. If you are so sore you are in pain and it won't let you lift, take a day extra.

It's difficult to assess 'sore'. So to toss some numbers in, I work with the following.

0 - no soreness or pain
1-3 - very mild soreness - doesn't inhibit you doing anything
4-7 - moderate soreness - it hurts some, but you can squat BW with no problem
8-9 - high soreness - it hurts to squat, and you find you can't get back up due to the pain level.
10 - constant soreness - it hurts to move. It hurts to do the negative of squat, and getting back up is out of the question.

0-7 I work out as planned. This is 95% of the time. I don't normally get 8-10 from my day to day routines, although I do recall getting them when I first started.

Just recently I was down sick for 3 weeks. I deloaded 10% and worked out. I was at a 10 for two days. I tried to work out as planned, just to push through it, and it was bullshit. I couldn't even get through BW warm ups.

After the next workout, it happened again, but only a 8-9. I loaded the bar with a light warm up load, did one rep and almost cried.

After the next, it was only a 7 and I did work out the following as planned, but my form really suffered causing me to repeat it.

I understand the general philosophy of not skipping a workout as it is easy to justify it, but I have to say, if you can be honest with yourself (which can be a bitch), then skipping a workout due to 8-10 levels of soreness is acceptable and in my opinion, advisable. Pushing myself though one of those workouts I think would most likely have done me injury.

For me, it comes down to being honest with myself, listening to my body and going accordingly.

Can you get through the workout with moderate to good form - yes - work out. No (being HONEST) - then take a day.

[killerdude494949]

I don't even get sore anymore unless I try something radically different in the gym. When I used to get sore I trained through it and voila I still grew. I hate the notion that you need to destroy a muscle and rest it for 5-7 days before training it again. I hate to see skinny guys in the gym that really want to be big and strong and have the heart but are mislead into doing 75 sets on each bodypart with sub par weights and ulitmately remain small.

[dylanamus]

I'm generally not sore at all after workouts, but if I push myself harder than usual - like trying to succeed at a weight that I only got half the reps on the previous try - then soreness is amplified the day after and can still be around a bit on the next workout. Fortunately, this tends to be isolated to bench and OHP, so I get the extra recovery time required any way.

This does bring me to one question though. Do your recommendations (mehdi) apply to people who are lifting intermediate level weights (relative to body weight) while continuing the SL basic program?

I have learnt a lot about my body from Sl and I can tell if I am going to fail due to lack of recovery. In this event, I prefer to do a Texas Method recovery day workout, rather than not lifting, which is pretty much what you said, I guess.

[mjh]

I'm part of the work through it crowd, and in my experience, soreness mostly goes away after a decent warm-up, and rarely interferes with the lifting itself. I agree that if you feel really bad, you can benefit from some more rest, but I think it's important to make an attempt. ie: if you're sore, get up, put on your gym gear and go to the gym. Start your warm-up, and if you don't think you can manage weights, you can do something else.

The key for me is not using soreness as an excuse not to even go to the gym.

[gargoyle]

@mjh, that is a good point. Even on those 9-10 days I had, I was still under Uncle Fester giving it a go until I realized it was futile.

[Amiright]

Does soreness ever go away? somethings always is going to be healing.. train always no excuses

[Mehdi]

I'm generally not sore at all after workouts, but if I push myself harder than usual - like trying to succeed at a weight that I only got half the reps on the previous try - then soreness is amplified the day after and can still be around a bit on the next workout. Fortunately, this tends to be isolated to bench and OHP, so I get the extra recovery time required any way.

This does bring me to one question though. Do your recommendations (mehdi) apply to people who are lifting intermediate level weights (relative to body weight) while continuing the SL basic program?

I have learnt a lot about my body from Sl and I can tell if I am going to fail due to lack of recovery. In this event, I prefer to do a Texas Method recovery day workout, rather than not lifting, which is pretty much what you said, I guess.

Few things that I noticed:
* Soreness seems to go away when you use the same method all the time. LIke strongilfts 5x5, decreases over time. Until weights get challenging again and then you can get some soreness after some rough workout.
* Soreness seem to come up a lot more when you change exercises all the time (ala westside for example, rotating).
* Coming with sore muscles at the gym doesn't necessarily mean you're not ready strength-wise to perform.

I will not soreness hold me back to go to the gym or prevent me to stick to the plan weight-wise.

My methodology, and i don't want to speak for Mark too much but I think it's safe to say his too, is based on things like training heavy, focusing on breaking personal records, sticking with the basics, training movements and not muscles, and really concentrating on the squat and squatting often.

I'm sure you've heard all that before, I suppose sometimes the devil is in the details. A few that i think are important are... Most of the athletes i train squat 3 times a week. Most focus heavily on multiple sets of 5 in the squat. We pull from the floor hard and often, doing some form of pulling (cleans, snatches, deadlifts, clean or snatch pulls, romanian deadlifts) almost every training day, usually 3-5 days a week. My guys know how to clean correctly, and use big numbers on the clean and snatch, with many of them cleaning above 80% of their best back squats. We train when tired, we train when sore.

lessons-from-glenn-pendlay-t8840.html

[JasonLB]

The whole idea of skipping a workout simply because of normal muscle soreness is just down right silly. First, yes, recovery is when the gains are made, and volume, frequency, intensity, rest, etc have to be balanced. Everyone agrees with that. And I imagine even those who advocate not training while sore would agree that if their body could somehow recover at a faster rate, they would train more frequently and at a greater intensity and reap faster gains -- after all, that is essentially what steroids accomplish and what "superior genetics" makes possible. Luckily, the body has a built in mechanism enabling anyone, over time, to recover faster... it's called adaptation. Soreness is a physical response to training stress, and just like other forms of stress, the way the body adapts to it is through repeated exposure. So, if on Wednesday your legs are sore from Monday's squat session and you wish you could recover faster, make sure you're getting enough food and go squat. It's that simple.