Sore muscles in the stomach
The training of the abdominal muscles causes microscopic cracks in the fine muscle fibers.If the training is very intense, many of these small cracks appear and cause the pain of sore muscles. Especially in the abdominal muscles, these pains can be very unpleasant and disturb every little movement, cough and laugh. Here, heat treatment is just as effective a method as for sore muscles of the rest of the skeletal musculature.
A warm bath with sea salt, a pleasant shower where you can direct the beam directly to the painful areas and the placing of a hot water bottle can promote the healing process and relieve the pain. Furthermore, an alternating shower can help, as it stimulates the circulation and thus improves the supply of the muscles. This method can be combined with sauna sessions and thus have an even more positive effect on regeneration.
A light workout with lower intensity and significantly longer breaks can also be beneficial to healing. You should always feel comfortable and not train under strong pain. If these methods do not clearly help to relieve the pain, painkillers, ointments, sprays and creams can be used to reduce the pain.
Is a sore muscle good or not?
Another widespread myth about sore muscles is that the occurrence of sore muscles is a sign of effective training. From a sports physiological point of view, this is wrong, because sore muscles first of all speaks for inefficient training, because the necessary regeneration of the muscle takes much longer than a usual recovery break without sore muscles. You don’t necessarily get sore muscles if you activate a muscle, for example during push-ups, until it “burns”.
On the contrary, the resulting training stimulus can stimulate the muscle to grow and make it more enduring. On the contrary, if you overload the muscle and demand too much power from a muscle beyond the appropriate level without allowing it to rest, there is a risk of sore muscles or, in the worst case, even muscle strain. This slows down the success of the training because the damaged muscle must first enter a repair and regeneration phase before it can perform again.
But: When certain muscles are no longer used, they are broken down. If you perform unusual movements, this can result in sore muscles. Whether during sports, gardening or weight training, unaccustomed or excessive strain results in small muscle tears (i.e. muscle soreness), which the body compensates for with repair mechanisms.
An advantage of sore muscles is therefore that the body usually repairs the muscle in such a way that it can reach a higher level afterwards. In this way, one can explain why a muscle gets used to a new strain so quickly. If the muscle is subjected to the same strain a second time, the muscle soreness usually does not appear as strongly.
So there is no definitive answer to the question of whether sore muscles are good or bad. Although it indicates that a muscle is injured, it also heralds a phase of regeneration and repair, which makes the muscle more powerful again.
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