Should You Be Sore After A Workout

Posted by Shannon Clark Jan 2, 2007

Muscle soreness is something that commonly happens after a strength training workout and is caused by the build-up of lactic acid in the muscles.

The problem of equating muscle soreness with progress is that different training techniques will elicit different degrees of muscle soreness. If you train using higher rep ranges will little rest periods you are going to see more muscle soreness than if you train using small rep ranges and lengthy rests. This is because the longer rest periods allow the body to clear the lactic acid that has built up (and small rep ranges do not create such a lactic acid build-up in the first place).

You will also see more muscle soreness if you are doing eccentric focused exercises (sets that really concentrate on lowering the weight very slowly).

So next time you have a workout and don't find you are sore, do not become upset about it. That does not mean you did not make progress during that gym session, it just means you did not cause as much lactic acid build-up as other sessions have.