If you follow some tips for prevention, you can reduce the risk of muscle soreness after exercise. If the muscle pain makes itself felt despite all precautionary measures, you can do a few things to relieve the discomfort. Here are some tips against sore muscles that are as simple as they are effective.
Prevention of sore muscles
The following tips will help you prevent sore muscles:
- Beware of overestimating yourself: muscles can withstand enormous forces, but most often you overestimate your own resilience and expect yourself to unaccustomed or too strong physical activities. If possible, untrained muscles should not be put under too much strain for too long right away. Regular endurance training, perhaps several times a week, helps to prevent muscle soreness. Furthermore, it makes sense to increase athletic performance only slowly and moderately. It is best to put together a training plan that builds slowly.
- Promote blood circulation: Rubbing the muscles before exercise with muscle oils or lotions that promote blood circulation also reduces the risk of muscle soreness. Here, products with rosemary or arnica have proven themselves.
- Warming up helps: warming up improves the functionality of the muscles, coordination and promotes blood circulation. Stretching exercises can also be incorporated into the approximately 15-minute warm-up program. The latter reduces the likelihood of injury and muscle soreness after exercise. For slow jogging or walking, however, you do not need to warm up.
- Stop slowly: After the workout, slowly run out again and use stretching exercises to lower muscle tone again.
When the muscle soreness is already there
If, despite all precautions, sore muscles do appear after exercise, follow these tips:
- Please don’t knead through it: Massages do not help to heal a sore muscle. On the contrary, too strong massages represent an additional mechanical irritation of the already damaged muscles and thus delay the healing process.
- Comfortable relaxation: after sports, a relaxing visit to the sauna or a hot bath with arnica, eucalyptus, spruce needles or even rosemary is highly recommended. The combination of medicinal plants and heat stimulates blood circulation. Many also find the initially on the skin cooling and internally but warming effect of rubbing alcohol as pleasant. If cramps occur in addition to sore muscles, magnesium helps – for example in the form of effervescent tablets.
- After the sport is not before the sport: So far, there is no evidence that the unloved muscle soreness damages the muscles in the long term, but you should still avoid renewed large loads during the healing phase – the plagued muscle now needs its recovery. Light activities with gentle movements such as swimming, walking or a little gymnastics are still allowed, because they promote blood circulation and thus support the regeneration.
Homeopathic applications with Arnica (globules, gel) are recommended, but have not proven effective in studies. If the pain should not have subsided after a few days or other complaints are added, it is useful to see a doctor. He or she can determine if another trigger, such as a strain or torn muscle fiber, is responsible for the muscle pain.
