Muscle soreness is something many people experience for a couple of days after exercising. When the activity has been particularly intense or you’ve been unusually inactive beforehand, it can even last as long as five days. This ache is often referred to as Doms (delayed onset muscle soreness), and this annoying pain can cause people to avoid training and exercise until it has completely subsided, for fear of injury or intensifying the soreness. Luckily – or maybe unluckily – you needn’t wrap yourself in cotton wool or avoid all activity until you feel 100% again.

Before we go further into the creaky, sweary and achy world of aerobic- and weight training-induced Doms, it is important to note that you should be careful with very severe and localised bouts of muscle pain following exercise. Pain emanating from a focused area of the muscle can be a symptom of a muscle tear, which could have been missed if you are very competitive, determined, have a high pain threshold, or were simply aching equally everywhere and nearing the end of some particularly gruelling activity. If the localised pain is accompanied by bruising or swelling or you’re worried, it would be wise to stop and seek medical advice.

Sometimes the post-exercise pain encompasses the entire muscle group – as you may have experienced after weights or a challenging class – in which case you should ensure you warm up fully before your next bout of training. The pain may impede your ability to assume correct posture, suitable technique and safe practices, which will increase your risk of injury. So it’s important to take the correct precautions, such as warming up, stretching, cooling down, and extra rest periods.

Most commonly, muscle ache will be more severe towards the beginning of a new exercise regime; such as a weights workout plan or resistance class in the gym, or even the start of a new rugby or football season. This is because your body is not conditioned to the intensity or duration of the activity, and most likely you won’t use a full and proper cool-down period. When time to exercise is scarce, this is the bit we all have a tendency to skip. To reduce the inevitable Doms, increased frequency of training, and even a reduced volume of repetitions in regards to weights specifically, will help. Your fitness and conditioning will improve as you become used to the activity and increase your fitness. Reducing the volume of reps (repetitions) per muscle group, but hitting the muscle two to three times per week across more sessions, will allow for better recovery, less ache and more efficient progress towards your goals.

Muscle soreness can be caused by small micro-tears in the muscles, and/or the build-up of byproducts of intense activity such as lactic acid and calcium, which can be reduced with a proper cool-down period. These tiny tears to the muscle cells are nothing to be worried about; they are what cause your muscles to grow and repair (in combination with good nutrition and sufficient rest), making the muscles stronger and bigger over time. In the majority of cases, muscle soreness should not be a cause for concern and shouldn’t stop you training, rather it simply serves as a reminder that you need to:

• cool down and stretch after intense periods of cardiovascular activity;

• ensure your nutrition (including hydration) is up to scratch;

• increase your fitness, which is likely to improve as the season or regime you’ve started progresses;

• consider training more muscle groups per session, and multiple times per week, rather than a one-muscle group such as a biceps or a chest day – where too much volume is used, resulting in debilitating muscle soreness, and no extra progress for the pain.

Muscle soreness should lessen as you become used to the volume, intensity and duration of exercise, so you should only have to train while aching for the first couple of weeks of a fitness programme. Simply ensure you leave around 48 hours between training the same body part twice with weights to allow the muscles to fully recover before you hit your next session.

Equally, in the same way that you shouldn’t stop training because you still have Doms, you shouldn’t label a workout as ineffective because you don’t experience severe muscle aches afterwards. This pain differs in intensity from person to person, and will lessen over time as you get used to the exercise. It does not have a correlation to muscle growth or improved fitness.

The best advice when weighing up whether or not to train with sore muscles is to listen to your body and distinguish between muscle ache, general fatigue (physical and mental) and an actual injury. If there is swelling and bruising around the site of pain or you’re worried, there may be some damage, so cease any activity that aggravates the area and seek medical advice. If your workout is extremely laboured even with a warm-up then consider training another part of your body or performing a non-weight bearing form of exercise instead – swimming, cycling or rowing.