Muscle Soreness – Suffering for Your Health
Muscle soreness is micro-injury to the muscle fibres.
Muscle soreness is the feeling of muscle pain that appears after unaccustomed exertion of the muscles. The pain sets in roughly 24 to 48 hours after the exertion and usually disappears again after about 4 days. So you don't feel the muscle pain immediately after the exertion. Repairing the muscle can take place across several muscles. Muscle soreness therefore means that the muscle shows the tiniest micro-traumas. In the process, the Z-disc in the sarcomere is torn.
Is lactate the cause of muscle soreness?
It's often said that lactate is the cause of muscle soreness. But the build-up of lactate in the muscle has no connection with muscle soreness. The micro-injuries mentioned above occur when the muscle fibres have to produce force at an unusually long muscle length. This can be the case, for example, when you're walking steeply downhill while hiking.
Can stretching prevent muscle soreness?
Many athletes try to prevent muscle soreness by stretching their muscles before or after strength training. Unfortunately, this won't get you to your goal. As mentioned above, muscle soreness is a matter of micro-injuries. Pulling the muscle fibres apart certainly won't reduce or prevent this.
Muscle Soreness. Good or Bad?
The pain from these micro-lesions usually disappears again after about 4 days. So there's no need to worry about muscle soreness. Quite the opposite. Among other things, muscle soreness leads to an adaptation in muscle fibre length. Your muscle will add sarcomeres in series to protect itself from such micro-injuries.
When micro-injuries occur in the muscle fibres, the satellite cells are activated. Satellite cells are muscle stem cells that play an important role in muscle building. They start to multiply through cell division and form new cell nuclei, which can be built into the existing muscle fibres. A greater number of cell nuclei is positive for muscle growth – after all, the blueprint for new muscle protein is packed away in the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) inside the cell nucleus.
