Soreness Can Hinder Progress
Should You Always Be Sore After You Train?
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I’ll just come out of the gates with this one, NO! Soreness is not a measure of how hard you trained or whether it was a good session or not.
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Typically soreness will appear when you introduce something new, so this could be a new movement, a new program, simply returning to the gym after a period of time off is considered new to the body and soreness will present itself initially.
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Soreness can actually be be counter productive towards progress as it can limit your ability and frequency to train that muscle group in a given week.
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Exercises which are hardest in a stretch position (eg Lying Hamstring Curls) Will typically bring on more soreness then other movements but again this is more of a initial response and as you repeat the movement pattern soreness should reduce drastically.
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Measuring a good workout comes down to your progressive overload, did you add more reps? Did you increase load lifted? Were you able to control the weight better and have more time under tension, were you able to add an extra set in. Start to look at what the objective of your program is and did you tick the boxes when it comes to the desired outcome of your session.
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So find the happy medium, don’t now just back off your train intensity cause I said soreness can hinder progress and use that as an excuse. Problem solve why you are getting sore and go from there ✌🏽.
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