Muscle Soreness

When I was first starting to lift weights, I would gage how effective my workout was by how sore my muscles were the next day. After a while, no matter how hard I worked my muscles were not getting very sore at all and this is when I realized that muscle soreness has nothing to do with how hard you work or the effectiveness of your workout. This is a common misconception with people beginning to workout. Muscle soreness occurs when the body is forced to do something that it is not used to. A good example of this is when, a couple weeks ago, I was going through a cutting phase where I was mostly doing cardio and I hadn't worked out my legs for a month or so. When I finally did do a leg workout, I went as hard as I could and had an extremely good workout. The next day I could hardly walk and was extremely sore for the next 4 or 5 days. If you workout each major muscle group once a week, you may find that the muscles your working are not sore the following day. Don't be discouraged, it simply means that your body is growing accustomed to the movements as well as the repairs to the muscle fiber. When the muscles grow TOO accustomed to a certain set of movements or exercises the Plateau Effect comes into play, which is where your muscle growth is stunted because the muscles are too used to the exercise and the fibers are not being ripped at the most effective rate. Change up your workout every 3-4 weeks to avoid the Plateau Effect, muscle soreness can tell you if the change was effective in working your muscles a different way. I will be posting my Leg Workout in the next few days.

Thanks for reading, Joe