I'm sore... now what?!

The most common word we use when it comes to us talking about our muscles feeling limited with range of motion or experiencing soreness is “tight”. I get it, and with that tightness can come some aches, and when we are super sore it can be a bit painful. But what about when we are simply limited with range of motion and we aren’t experiencing soreness from previous days training? Another concept to consider is if your muscles and the range of motion are feeling “short”. The difference?

Tight muscles often just need some recovery and a chance to loosen up. This can be done through dynamic warm ups like we often do in class, static stretching depending on the muscle group and soreness, or even workouts that help increase blood flow like the Zone 2 work we are doing weekly. With the right approach we can often help our “tight” muscles feel more relaxed, the increase in range of motion as we move, and they start to feel better. We all like feeling like we have done something and a bit of residual soreness can actually feel good. But if it’s preventing you from doing the things you love outside the gym or continually training in the gym we may have overdosed OR we likely need to be thinking about additional ways to maximize recovery. What are the 2 most important?

1. Sleep
2. Nutrition

Shocker, right. You getting 8+ hours of quality sleep each night is going to be key in your recovery. It’s when your body is at rest and doing the work to repair itself and adapt to the training stimulus you're exposing it to on a daily basis. 

We ALL know nutrition is a key component to our health and performance. This includes recovery. Keeping it simple we should be eating quality food (real food that you have to cook, not processed stuff), AND you have to eat ENOUGH. I think it’s all too often that we see people under-eating and not giving their bodies a chance to recover. You need fuel to aid in muscle repair and recovery. Yes, protein is good. Generally about 1 gram/lb of bodyweight each day. For some this is going to feel like a ton! But we also need carbohydrates to help shuttle that protein to our muscles. Good, quality carbs like fruits, vegetables, root vegetables like sweet potatoes, etc, and some grains depending on how we respond to them are important as well. Simply, eat well, eat enough. More questions? Grab a trainer and we are happy to help.

There is a third approach that is super helpful for recovery.

3. Increase blood flow

Anytime you are feeling sore one of the ways to decrease your soreness and help speed up the recovery process is to have increased blood flow which helps shuttle nutrients and fresh blood supply to your muscles which help you recover. The trick is how do we do this without just spending more time working out. Get ready for the shameful plug!

Sauna and Cold Plunge: yep, it’s easy because you don’t have to do any physical activity but the increase and decrease in temperatures, especially if we do them with a contrast approach (back to back) will increase blood flow and help with recovery. The heat from the sauna gets your blood pumping as it elevates your heart rate and makes your muscles feel more relaxed. There is even some research that shows an increase in red blood cell count if you do this after a strength training session. 

The cold from the plunge causes constriction of your vessels and brings blood to your core to help keep you warm and helps reduce inflammation. But when you get out and are warming back up… you get that increase in blood flow again. It’s a simple, no hack approach that has loads of other health benefits for you as well. Additionally, we try to keep it at an incredibly reasonable price ($99/month) and open only to our members as most places for sauna/plunge only are upwards of $300+/month.

Range of motion that is “short” will feel what some may think of as “blocked”. This is often due to joint limitation. Think of this as your hips when squatting, shoulders when going overhead, or hamstrings and low back when you are hinging for a deadlift. If your range of motion is “short” and you can’t move through the full movement with quality mechanics and form it’s going to make some movement super difficult. While this could be tied to “tight” muscles it’s not something that would be limited to soreness. So you won’t find yourself doing dynamic warm ups and finding loads of improvement here. A shortened range of motion is often going to take quite a bit more time to improve. But how?

Eccentric Loading: When used with the right amount of weight and slow lowering you can get a better “stretch” and your muscles are lengthening, under load, which helps to build range of motion. Typically sets of 5 reps or so that have you doing a lowering phase of :03-:05 sec and a regular return is a good starting point. You know those stretch and strengthen days we do on deload weeks? Now you know when these elements are in them. 

Band distraction work is also another approach that helps increase the stretch or and put some tension on the joint in a good way to get you in a better position. Working through ranges of motion with banded distraction may help improve some of that joint stiffness over a period of time. The limiting factor here is if you have an injury with significant scar tissue build up, possibly a surgery that has pins, etc, you may not get much of a result here and that’s ok. We just have to work with what we’ve got, learn movement patterns and positions that are the best for us, and continue to work with the range of motion we have. 

If you struggle with what approaches to take here to help improve your movement grab a trainer. Even a 30 min session can include a quick assessment of your joints to see where you are limited and we can provide you with some simple movements and approaches to improve them. Check back in with us in 4 weeks or so and we can see what improvements have been made and work and provide additional approaches. 

Tight muscles or shortened ranges of motion have different approaches for improving them and we would love to help you work through anything you may be experiencing. 

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