Muscle Soreness (DOMS): Should You Train When Sore?

Ever had a great training session and then, two days later, discovered that sitting on the toilet has become a carefully planned manoeuvre?

That's Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, or DOMS.

It's the soreness and stiffness that can develop after training, usually appearing several hours afterwards and often feeling worst around 24–72 hours later.

It's particularly common when you're new to training, return after some time off, dramatically increase your workload, or do movements your body isn't accustomed to.

And although it can be uncomfortable, muscle soreness doesn't automatically mean you need to stop training.

WHY DO MUSCLES GET SORE?

You'll often hear that soreness is caused by tiny "micro-tears" in your muscles.

The reality is more complicated.

Unaccustomed or demanding exercise can cause microscopic muscle damage alongside a temporary inflammatory response and changes within the tissues. These processes can contribute to DOMS, but soreness isn't simply you feeling your muscles tearing and repairing themselves.

One thing we do know is that certain types of exercise are particularly good at producing soreness—especially movements involving lots of eccentric muscle action, where a muscle produces force while lengthening.

Think slowly lowering a heavy weight, walking downhill or doing far more lunges than you had any business doing.

SORENESS DOESN'T MEAN PROGRESS

Some people love DOMS.

If they wake up the next morning unable to straighten their arms, they assume yesterday's workout must have been brilliant.

Unfortunately, soreness isn't a particularly useful measure of training quality.

You can have a fantastic training session and experience very little soreness.

You can also absolutely destroy yourself, spend four days walking like you've been hit by a bus and achieve very little beyond making Wednesday unnecessarily difficult.

If your goal is getting stronger or building muscle, look at things that actually reflect progress:

Are you getting stronger? Are you performing more work? Is your technique improving? Are you building muscle?

Not:

Does it hurt when I sit down?

CAN I TRAIN WHEN I'M SORE?

Usually, yes.

Mild-to-moderate muscle soreness doesn't automatically require a rest day.

Moving and warming up can temporarily make sore muscles feel considerably better, and you may find that you're perfectly capable of having a productive training session.

But there's some judgement involved.

If you're slightly sore but moving normally and your performance is good, there's probably little reason to change your session.

If you're extremely sore, your movement is significantly restricted or your performance has fallen off a cliff, hammering the same muscles again probably isn't going to achieve much. Train something else, reduce the workload or take some additional recovery.

Training more frequently can actually help here too. As your body becomes accustomed to a particular type of exercise, the same session generally produces less soreness.

This is sometimes called the repeated-bout effect.

Essentially, your body gets better at dealing with things you've asked it to do before.

WARM UP AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS

Rather than deciding whether you can train while lying on the sofa feeling sorry for yourself, start your warm-up.

Move around. Get warm. Gradually practise the movements you're planning to train and see what happens.

DOMS will often feel much less dramatic once you've started moving.

If everything begins moving normally and your strength feels reasonably good, crack on.

If you're still moving like Frankenstein after ten minutes and your warm-up weights feel inexplicably heavy, that's useful information too.

Adjust accordingly.

WHAT HELPS MUSCLE SORENESS?

Unfortunately, there's no magic recovery technique that instantly gets rid of DOMS.

The fundamentals are considerably less exciting:

Sleep well. Eat enough. Get sufficient protein. Stay reasonably active. Give your body time to adapt.

Light movement can make you feel better, although that doesn't necessarily mean you've accelerated the underlying recovery process.

Massage and some other recovery techniques may temporarily reduce perceived soreness too. That's perfectly useful if they make you feel better, but you don't need an elaborate recovery routine every time your legs ache.

Consistency is probably the biggest solution.

The person who trains regularly tends to experience much less disruptive soreness than the person who annihilates themselves once every fortnight.

SORENESS OR INJURY?

This distinction matters.

DOMS is generally a dull, aching soreness within muscles that develops after training and gradually improves.

A sudden sharp pain during an exercise, significant swelling or bruising, loss of function, severe weakness, pain around a joint, or symptoms that continue getting worse aren't things I'd automatically dismiss as DOMS.

If something feels genuinely injured, treat it differently.

IN CLOSING

Muscle soreness is a normal consequence of training, particularly when you do something new or considerably more demanding than you're accustomed to.

You don't need to chase it and you don't necessarily need to fear it.

If you're sore, warm up and see how you move.

Sometimes you'll realise you need an easier session.

Sometimes you'll realise you genuinely need a rest.

And quite often you'll realise that you're absolutely fine—you just made the mistake of sitting still for twenty minutes before trying to stand up.

Train consistently, progress your workload sensibly and let soreness become something that occasionally happens rather than something you use to judge whether your training is working.