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How To Ease Muscle Soreness Fast

Sore muscles are never ideal, however, there is a lot of good news when it comes to soreness today.

Edge Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine can really take the edge off with our recovery amenities:

  • Infrared sauna designed to get to the heart of aches and pains and create release
  • NormaTec compression boots to bolster your recovery
  • Physical therapy and therapeutic manual therapy  to ease muscle soreness
  • Cryotherapy at our Edge Pro Location

 

Stay ahead of the game

Everyone knows how frustrating it is to be side-lined, injured or in pain when you’re trying to move forward with your goals/recovery process. Pain can affect your daily routine and your entire life.

Muscle soreness occurs due to “microtrauma” of the muscle fibers and connective tissues and is a completely natural result of the breaking down of muscle that occurs during the recovery process.

The following 5 tips will help you prevent muscle soreness and manage it when it does happen:

1. Warm-Up

Warming up before exercising is one of the most overlooked ways to prevent and ease delayed onset muscle soreness. It is a necessary component to health and fitness, and helps speed up your road to recovery.

Warm-ups should be dynamic.

If you’re focusing on lower body training, you’ll want to perform dynamic movements like walking lunges, leg swings, butt kicks and lateral lunges, combined with dynamic stretches like the plantar flexor stretch and a light aerobic activity.

Key tip: When in doubt, get your phone out. Google has a massive list of supplemental warm-up exercises for you to use as a personal template. To effectively reduce muscle soreness, warm up for about 7-10 minutes.

2. Get Enough Protein

Getting enough of the right kind of protein is crucial when it comes to easing muscle soreness.

Research shows getting protein immediately before and after exercise (combined with a small amount of carbohydrates) can help ease muscle soreness. Plus, it’s really easy to just add a scoop of protein powder into your smoothies.

For most active individuals, 0.8g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight is plenty to meet your needs. If you weigh 180 pounds then you’re looking about 66 grams of protein per day. Focus on consuming healthy and clean food sources that contain a good amount of protein, including a balanced proportion of fats and carbs. With regular well-balanced meals you’ll easily meet your daily protein requirements.

3. Soak in Epsom Salt

Epsom salt, or magnesium sulfate, is a natural mineral compound historically known for its ability to reduce inflammation, ease stress and flush toxins from the body.

Fun fact: Most of the magnesium in your body is located in the bones and muscles, making it a key player when we’re targeting muscle repair. This also helps create ATP in the body, which increases muscle endurance for the exercises you’ll be performing at your physical therapy office. It absorbs best through the skin so a soak in the tub is your best bet.

4. Ingest Anti-Inflammatory Foods

The most common side effects of injuries and post-workout muscle soreness is inflammation. Anti-inflammatory foods can help you target muscle soreness. A few great options include: Turmeric, ginger, fatty fish, olive oil, tomatoes, spinach, kale, nuts and fruits.

5. Let’s Rock and Roll! (Foam Roll)

Foam rolling is essentially an inexpensive, convenient way to give yourself a deep tissue massage. The scientific term for rolling is myofascial release, which refers to releasing deep knots formed in our muscles that can cause pain and stiffness.

But the benefits don’t stop there: foam rolling has also been shown to alleviate muscle fatigue, soreness, delayed-onset muscle soreness and even enhance performance. Make sure to pause for a few breaths when you feel the foam hit those tighter-than-normal areas.

With these techniques, hopefully getting out of bed after some physical exercise will be less stressful and allow you to get back to your best self as quickly as possible!

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