4 Ways To Prevent Muscle Soreness And Fatigue
Doing regular exercise is crucial to keep one’s body in good shape. Aside from improving bone health and muscle growth, exercising is also one of the key elements to prevent risks of various illnesses. However, some disadvantages could come from doing too much exercise, including sore muscles and strains.
When working out, many people, especially athletes, tend to exhaust themselves to the point of fatigue. If that’s your concern, there are numerous alternatives you can consider to prevent muscle soreness, including sports strapping and other kinesiology taping options.
To have a better understanding of this matter, continue reading this article.
What Is Muscle Fatigue?
Muscle soreness or muscle fatigue is the condition of extreme pain in your muscles due to stiffness. Many people suffering from muscle soreness may also have a hard time moving around due to tightened muscles. Some of the most common symptoms of muscle fatigue may include cramps, discomfort, and muscle aches.
While some people tend to use these terms interchangeably, note that muscle soreness is different from muscle rigidity and spasticity. While the latter could be a result of doing strenuous activities, the other two conditions are characterized by muscle stiffness even if you’re not moving.
To help you more, here are some symptoms of muscle fatigue you should know:
Inexplicable muscle aches
Redness
Inflammation
Bruising
Painful movements
In most cases, muscle soreness can improve quickly after several hours or days. However, it’s still best to learn the basic measures you can take to handle them better. Plus, those seemingly simple muscle aches might be early signs of severe conditions.
Pro Tips To Avoid Muscle Soreness
After doing exercises, there’s a bigger chance of suffering from muscle soreness, especially if your routines are incorrect. Although it might not pose detrimental impacts on your health, muscle soreness could cause mild to severe aches in your body.
Particularly, muscle fatigue could last up to 12 hours. In severe cases, this soreness could take up to 48 to 72 hours after your workout.
To better avoid risks of muscle soreness, you can try the following:
Perform Warm-Ups
Although some people tend to skip this stage when working out, warm-ups play a vital role in preparing your muscles for the exercise. Many experts believe that warm-ups could efficiently prepare your body for the upcoming strenuous activities, raise your body temperature, and regulate blood flow.
Apart from that, warming up could also enhance your balance, bodily coordination, and flexibility to better handle exercise routines. Not to mention its significance in lessening risks of injuries while working out, warm-ups could also prevent muscle soreness and fatigue.
To warm up, you can consider doing light exercises and stretches, including jumping rope, slow jogging, or cycling.
Hydrate Yourself
Aside from warming up, you should also not forget to hydrate yourself properly when doing exhausting physical activities. Water could help control your body temperature, transport nutrients to gain more energy, and ease your joints. It could also help boost blood circulation, maintain body functions, and reduce the risks of heat stress. Also, drinking water helps replenish the fluids you lose throughout the workout.
Without water, you might not last long in your workout sessions. Your body temperature might also increase. Not only that, your body will struggle to keep up with the activities. You’ll also feel more tired than usual. Additionally, a lack of proper hydration could result in muscle soreness, dizziness, fatigue, and other health concerns.
To better help yourself, you must drink plenty of water before and after your exercises. You can also take breaks to rest and rehydrate yourself.
Take A Break
After doing certain sets of workout routines, you may consider taking short breaks to help your body recover. In most cases, overdoing your exercises without any rest increases the risks of muscle stiffness and fatigue.
To avoid such situations, you must wait at least 48 hours after your last workout session before performing the same activities. You should also vary your exercise routines to prevent strain. As much as possible, you can do light exercises for the same muscle groups to keep your body active.
Furthermore, if you’ve done running the previous days, you can take do brisk walking or stretching the next days to avoid going to complete rest.
Cool Down
As much as you need to warm up to prepare your body, cooling down is also an essential part of your workout routines. Particularly, it could help relax your muscles and avoid soreness. Note that doing some stretches is important after doing exercises.
Apart from making your muscles more flexible, cooling down could also promote blood circulation and keep blood away from your muscles. After driving blood away from your muscles and back to your heart, your muscles could then effectively recover.
Key Takeaway
Exercise and workouts are crucial in maintaining your body in optimal condition. However, muscle soreness and fatigue could happen if you do your routines incorrectly. To better prevent these risks, you can do the tips above. Aside from that, you can also consider taping or strapping your muscles to prevent injury. Through these tips, you can avoid muscle soreness and fatigue.
