DOMS Demystified: What Soreness Really Means and How to Train Smarter

You crushed your workout—but two days later, you’re hobbling down the stairs like you’re 90. That deep, aching muscle soreness? That’s DOMS—Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness—and it’s not the sign of a great workout you think it is.

In this episode, we unpack:

• What actually causes DOMS (spoiler: it’s not lactic acid)
• Why eccentric movements trigger more soreness
• The most common mistakes that make DOMS worse
• How to prevent that can’t-move-my-legs feeling
• Smart recovery tactics that support your body like a well-oiled pit crew

I’ll also explain why soreness isn’t the goal—progress is—and how you can build durability without burning out. Whether you’re just getting back into training or you’re tired of feeling wrecked after every session, this one’s for you.

👊 Let’s learn how to train smarter and recover better.

See Coach Aaron behind the scenes in this daily YouTube VLOG on his own health and fitness journey. Subscribe, engage, and extend your healthspan. 

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Transcript

You crushed your workout. You feel like a champ, but then 48 hours later, you feel like you can't walk down the stairs without gripping on the railing and feeling like you're 90 years old. That deep aching soreness that is DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness. And today we're going to break that down. What causes it, how to prevent it, what the risk factors are with getting DOMS, how to manage it if you do have it when you get it and

why feeling wrecked after every workout isn't a badge of honor. It's a sign that your pit crew, if you will, might need a smarter game plan. And my question to you is, if you've ever had DOMS, what is the longest duration that has lasted? Give me a comment. Has it been a day? Has it been two days? Has it been three days? Has it been longer than two or three days? Will you still get that deep, achy soreness? Let me know in the comments. But I want to think of our bodies as

a high performance race car. And after a tough race or after a tough workout, there's a pit crew that comes in and cleans things up, changes the tires, gives the engine a tune up. And it's right after your race or right after your workout that this pit crew jumps into action. And that soreness that you feel, that muscle soreness that you feel after the, after the race or after your hard workout.

That's not really a crash. It's the grind of your pit crew rebuilding your engine. And it's the noise and the effort from the repairs and the upgrades that are being done internally from your pit crew that gives us that muscle soreness. So it's, there's a reason that we're sore, but also it can be a big hindrance to progress. We're to break all that down today. My name is Aaron Shaw. I've been 30 years.

in the industry of helping people reach their health potential. I'm an occupational therapist, a certified strength and conditioning specialist, health and fitness coach. And in my fifties, and I'm still a competitive athlete, despite the very real age related changes of my body, I have coaching clients that are also in the same boat as I am, which is things aren't as easy as they used to be. My body's changing in ways that I'm not super stoked about. Maybe you can relate to that.

And it is part of life, but there are things that we can absolutely do to manage this aging process in a way to still be super healthy, super fit in middle age and beyond. takes, it takes some being mindful and being really intentional about things, not jumping on the latest fad or latest bandwagon, but just following the science, which is what I talk about here on this podcast and with my coaching clients and on my

YouTube channel and LinkedIn and various platforms. It's all about sharing what the science says. And then also sharing what works for me, what doesn't work for me. I am imperfect. have big ambitious health and fitness goals. I want to live a very long time. I want to be around for my family, but I realized that that is easier said than done. So we're all in this together. So today, one part of being healthy and active is of course, exercising.

In this podcast, I talk about the pillars of healthspan and they are from the top, exercise, nutrition, sleep, emotional wellbeing and preventative care. So exercise right off the top. you want to live a longer life, you have to exercise. If you want to be healthier during the length of time that you live, you have to exercise. If you shave that off or you minimize that, or you just maybe dabble with it once in a while, you are

shortening your life, heart stop. And we don't want that. So exercise is an absolute direct path. The evidence is undisputed. It has such a great powerful impact. And actually the way that I've heard it framed is the positive impact of exercise is actually more powerful than any sort of negative impact from smoking and heart disease and anything else. So if you want to really move the needle,

You're only going to do one thing exercise, but with that does come doms. What are doms? Again, this is delayed onset muscle soreness usually begins 12 to 24 hour post post exercise. So you may walk out of the gym in this case. So you've done a big work on the gym and say, Hey, I feel pretty good. Feel like I got my muscles kind of pumped up. Heart rate was up.

That's all well and good. feel pretty good. But then later than night or typically when you get up the next morning, you, you do a little stretch. When you get up, think, man, I am sore. Where, you know, where are you sore? Is it your back? Is it your legs? Is it your shoulders? And this delayed onset muscle soreness tends to peak 24 to 72 hours after the insult, if you will. And the range that it tends to resolve.

can be as short as a day. It can be as long as a week, depending upon how much damage was done to the tissue, how much time and effort your internal pit crew has to take to fix things up. So it's not really a sign of injury, but it is absolutely a sign of micro trauma in your body being in the process of trying to recover from that micro trauma. We need to remember that.

when we are exercising, we are, whether it's cardio exercise or resistance training exercise, that the intent of exercising is to actually cause micro trauma to the tissue. a, not macro trauma that we could say is more is an injury, but micro trauma. We're trying to ever so gently ever so, you know,

I'm gonna say intentionally, you're kind of finesse a little bit of tissue damage by overloading the tissue that your pit crew has to come in, tidy things up, repair some of this micro trauma. You go through a recovery process and you are stronger and more durable and more resilient from that. DOMS is really common after doing a new exercise or doing an intense workout. And especially if you're doing

are focusing on eccentric movements. So let's talk a quick second about what eccentric means.

One way to think about it is with a bicep curl, an exercise that people are really probably pretty accustomed to at least understanding what that is. If you, there's a rack of dumbbells and you bend down and you pick up a dumbbell from the rack and you bend your elbow up, that is a concentric movement. You're contracting your bicep muscle. So that's concentric movement. Eccentric movement is the lowering of that. So it's basically the lengthening of that muscle. So when you curl your bicep,

your length of that muscle is shrinking as it's bending your elbow up. And as you release that, the length of your bicep is actually becoming greater. That is an eccentric movement. Another example, if you are walking up a hill,

As you walk up a hill, there tends to be more concentric movements happening. When you're walking down a hill and for anybody who hopefully you can relate to this because it makes a huge impact for me as far as doms goes, walking down a hill, there's more eccentric loading of the quadricep muscle, the muscle on the front side of your thigh as your foot hits the ground and then kind of like slowly

You know, you're slowly walking down the cell trumps like you're riding your brakes. That is an eccentric movement. So let's talk about what causes DOMS. There is a myth. have to bust this myth. Lactic acid does not cause delayed onset muscle soreness. Typically, lactic acid will clear from your body or clear from the system within about an hour.

So lactic acid is a, it's actually a fuel source. So it's a temporary fuel source and it's really, we call it lactic acid, it's actually lactate, but it's produced during intense exercise when your muscles need quick energy. Quick energy, think explosive energy, quite the opposite of going for a nice long hike or a nice long walk. This lactic acid is needed to...

yeah, pep in your step if you will, or jumping or an explosive sprint or something. But it is cleared out quickly, you know, fairly quickly after that moment versus delayed onset muscle soreness happens later. That soreness that you feel after or you feel from DOMs typically doesn't even begin until the day after an exercise. And again, it can peak, it can peak out within 24,

Sometimes 48, even sometimes a little bit longer than that, up to 70, 72 hours, it can still be getting like worse and worse and worse. So you may feel a little sore in the morning after a maybe overly ambitious workout, but you may also realize that the next day, like, damn, I feel worse today than I did yesterday. Yeah, because you're actually still, your pit crew, your internal physiological pit crew is still trying to repair all that wear and tear that you did.

to get you back online and get you ready to do it again. So it does, it can go from a little bit uncomfortable. It can go from like kind of being bad to worse in a sense.

So this timeline, it doesn't actually match how quickly lactic acid is removed from your system. So it's not really a factor in that. So it's microtrauma and inflammation that are really the culprits here. So DOMS is all about micro tears.

So DOMS is all about micro tears, micro trauma to the muscle fibers that occur during, again, strenuous workout or even new exercises. So if you're a regular gym goer or you're a regular person who jumps into a bunch of different exercise classes and suddenly you're trying a new movement pattern, you're trying a new way to exercise. And an example could be going from

You know, yoga, if you've been doing yoga for a period of time, then you go into a class that involves kind of some jumping around, maybe some plyometric stuff that even though you may be mobile and have good balance and have pretty good stamina, whatnot, pretty, you know, great body awareness, that change, that difference, your muscles, your tendons, your ligaments are not accustomed to that. That could trigger DOMS. It's inflammatory response.

that again, your body, your your pitch crew is going to have to go in there and like fine tune things up. So in my opinion, this is one of the big reasons why people drop out of fitness, just can't get into a fitness routine. And it is because people come out, uh, people come out too aggressive, have really unrealistic expectations.

And unfortunately, the health and fitness industry tends to oversell what can be done. And especially, you know, it's a new year and you get a new personal trainer and you get, you know, five personal training visits and people are motivated and they want to feel the burn and all of these things with the best of intentions. But when people start off from having little to no training over the past month or several months, or for some people several years.

It's very easy to cause a lot of micro trauma leading to a lot of pain, lot of delayed onset muscle soreness that lasts for days and days and days and days. And that really indicates that people went too hard too soon. And it's so hard to stay motivated. If you're trying to get, you're trying to do something good for yourself and your body just feels like absolute garbage.

And of course, if you're really sore, how in the world are you going to go back, go back into the gym and do something the next day, or even a couple of days later, if you feel so sore and so beat up, there's, it's, it's really demoralizing for people, especially because you're not going to see any physical difference in your body. You're not going to feel, certainly not going to feel stronger. Cause you're just going to feel really sore and uncomfortable. And there's a risk because your movement patterns are going to be impaired. It's not.

fair to expect to be able to control your body well, to balance well, activate muscles in the way that you intend to if you've got all these pain signals that are screaming at you along the

But I digress for a moment on how things can be better in the health and fitness industry.

So the sense of the cause of DOMS, we understand that it's microtrauma. It's part of an inflammatory response. You've got immune cells that kind of rush in to repair tissue. It's very normal. So we want that to happen. We need that to happen. We have chemical signals that happen that really kind of sensitize our nerves. All of this is normal. And we just need to make sure that we are aware of it and we're training.

in a measured way that actually helps us take steps closer to our goals without falling off a cliff, without beating ourselves up, without causing a ton of tissue damage that exceeds what our body's capable of repairing and what is really going to impair you meeting your goals.

So the pit crew analogy again, after your race, after your training.

We're going to assume that you're not injured, but you're just kind of beat up a little bit. You know, for the F1 car, the tires are worn, the parts are overheated. you know, the crew is going to be in there kind of replacing parts and refueling things and tweaking the systems. All of that is maintenance. That's part of the process. And the goal is to get the car back out on the road to race another day. And that's what you're feeling. That's the sort of thing that you're feeling. You're feeling all that actions.

all those actions that are happening. Your pit crew.

But let's move on to what the risk factors are for DOMs. We've touched on this already, but doing a new exercise, a new workout or doing things that are really high volume. And specifically, this is going to be doing things that are atypical for what you're used to doing. So this is where we have to be a little bit humble. And if you certainly if you were in some sort of exercise class and the instructor says.

For the next minute, we're going to do this or everybody's going to do 10 repetitions of XYZ exercise. And you look around and you start seeing other people doing things and thinking that that's what you should be doing. That is a recipe for disaster on so many levels. Not the least of which is your, you, you are an individual and you have unique capacity, unique abilities and unique limitations as we all do. And so to try to bucket five, 10, 20, 30 people to all do the exact same thing.

and to have success with that. It's not going to have, that's not how it works. Not how your body works. So it's, if it's new, if it's high volume, that is a risk. If you are, if you're not accustomed to that high volume. So again, just going to touch on that again. If you take the next several months, let's say. So if you came to me and said, Hey, I really want to do a 90 minute fitness class and I want to just crush it the whole time. But I've

I am. I can only really tolerate about 30 minutes right now of, you know, jumping around and doing body weight stuff and maybe some plyometric stuff. I can't do, if you can't tolerate that volume, could we train you to tolerate that? Sure. Definitely. But it's a process. Your body has, I mean, there's just think about it as endurance athletes, you know, runners, some people, while they can run 10 K other people are running like ultra marathons or, you know, a marathon every month and just crazy high volume.

but they've been taking a long time to accommodate that. So another risk factor is focusing on eccentric movement. So this eccentric movement does produce more wear and tear on the muscle fibers and will therefore tend to lead to more soreness. So this is the idea of lowering weights. Another way to get a sense of what eccentric is, is if you're standing up right now,

If you were to slowly lower yourself into a chair, that lowering is eccentric. That's an eccentric movement. Concentric would be starting in a chair and slowly standing up. You're contracting your quadricep muscles and your glutes, your hip extenders. And so as you're standing up, you're contracting those muscles. The muscles are becoming a little bit shorter as you slowly lower yourself down.

eccentrically loading those muscles. When you do that eccentric movement tends to be more tissue damage. So I can tell you that for me, anything that involves downhill walking, downhill running, eccentric movement, I feel it. Another thing that is a risk factor is if you are not recovered when you're going into an exercise session or to do a certain exercise. So if you've not quite fully recovered from your last

whatever exercise you're doing, shoulder press, example. So if you're doing a shoulder press, did one, did a pretty solid session a day or two ago and you're still kind of sore. And then you're like, I'm supposed to do it again today. And you do it again. Well, if you're not fully recovered, of course you're at risk for making, know, really kind of lighting up that muscle soreness. So that can actually take the, you know, that doms and extend the duration of it. So you may feel like crap even longer.

And as I touched on being more fit does not mean that you're immune from getting DOMS. And I am a competitive cyclist and I can ride my gravel bike or my mountain bike for hours and hours and do it a couple of days in a row. And certainly I can definitely tell you that I feel sore from doing that, especially when I ride really hard, but it pales in comparison to me.

walking down a hill from hiking. So we did a hike that was 30 minutes uphill and 30 minutes downhill. My quads are going to be more sore from that one hour of total work with 30 minutes walking down a hill. My quads would be more sore from that than if I went out and rode my bike for three hours. It's crazy to me. Again, it's not a cardiovascular challenge to me necessarily, but my quads just are

And running around my knees are just like so friggin sore for days on end. So, but that's the difference. That's so that is, you know, you can be athletic and fit and healthy and still find something that you're not accustomed to doing, especially if it's an eccentric type exercise and get doms. So even if one car is breakdown once in a while, when they're on a brand new track, same goes for your body, just part of life. But let's talk about how we can prevent doms.

First and foremost, it is having a gradual increase in load for your muscles. That's a gradual increase in resistance, a gradual increase in sets and reps. And by gradual, I mean taking four weeks, five weeks, six weeks of trying to be as humble as you can and as patient as you can, especially if you're just starting.

a resistance training routine from either from scratch, or if you've just kind of been dabbling a little bit, but not very consistent. And finally something switched in your head and you're like, Hey, you know what? I'm going to make this part of who I am. I'm going to live forever. I'm going to be frigging strong deep into my seventies and eighties. Great. That's awesome. Now, when you start doing something consistently, just be patient and always leave some fuel in the tank, if you will. So the, the idea of starting an exercise routine.

or revamping one or kind of ramping it up little bit is starting off slow, recognizing that the first, I mean, if you're brand new, it can take four to six weeks of doing low resistance, kind of slow and controlled movements where you feel that you can probably do another three or four repetitions at the, at the end of every single set, but don't do that right away for those first few weeks. Let your

let your nervous system start to adapt. So your movement patterns get a little bit better. Your nervous system will start recruiting your muscles a little bit more efficiently. So you actually start to feel stronger, which is really cool. Your muscles will start to adapt. Your tendons will start to adapt. Your joints will start to adapt in a gradual kind of way, because that's as fast as things happen, especially if you're in middle age like me. So once you're in your

know, deep foot in your forties and certainly like I'm in my fifties and sixties and so on. You know, the physiology we change slower than we want. Even though you may be doing the perfect exercise routine, that may be perfectly custom to you. The right movements and you know, even a little bit of rehab ish type stuff in there if you need it. That's great. It still takes weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks to go through what I call this.

we call this a preparatory phase or where you're kind of preparing your tissue for more challenges to come. And unfortunately, a lot of people don't prevent delayed onset muscle soreness because they just skip over that preparing your body to tolerate more demanding things and they jump right to the really high demand things and then complain that I keep getting hurt every time I go to the gym or I keep getting hurt every time I start a new exercise routine or something.

It's like, yeah, cause you're starting on step two. You haven't even done step one yet. So I know I'm going to beat this. I could beat this topic to a dead horse or whatever you want to call it. However you want to say it. could talk about this all day long. I've done another episode on how to develop a preparatory phase, but if nothing else, if you do not want to be sore or injured, and if you do want results, please invest in a preparatory phase where you just ever so gradually

increase the load on your tissue over four to six weeks. So we're going to prioritize.

So to prevent DOMs, we're going to prioritize progressive overload. Again, not huge jumps. We're going to focus on eccentric control in our training. So it's going to be moving slowly and that eccentric phase with an appropriate amount of resistance. So we don't overly traumatize our tissue. We're going to definitely do proper warmups, dynamic mobility, some dynamic stretching.

very light intro sets whenever you're doing new exercises. So if you are going to do a squat, for example, the first thing you're going to do is warm up very really well for it. You can do some dynamic mobility really well. You can do some body weight squats first. And then when you decide to do weighted squats, whether that's with a barbell or a dumbbell, at least have one set where

The resistance on that is light. It's resistance, so it's more than your body weight, but it's still light. And you can go through the full range of motion that you want to achieve, and you can do six repetitions, eight repetitions, 10 repetitions really comfortably. You're certainly putting in a little bit of work, but those light intro sets, and especially if you're trying this as a new exercise, is a great way to get your body, your nervous system

muscles or tendons queued up to do the work that you want it to do. And as long as you're not overloading it too quickly, you're safe. You're as safe as you're going to be with that.

But let's be real, you're going to have doms. I've had doms. I will have them again and again and again and again. So it's going to happen. So what can you do? Let's say for some magical reason you woke up today and you're like, Oh my God, my quads are just destroyed from this thing I did. I, uh, do want a big hike and I don't really hike or I went on a run with a friend that I don't normally run. And now I'm just like, so sore.

from yesterday or two days ago or three days ago, what are you going to do about it? Well, good news and bad news. Nothing is going to magically fix this muscle soreness, but there are some things you can do to kind of like tone it down. Remembering, framing this, that it is a normal part of the recovery process. have your internal pit crew is trying to patch up all these little micro tears you have in the tissue. It's normal.

Your body's doing what it's trying to do. You can either like gently try to help it along. can try to create a very great working environment for your pit crew, or you can scream at your pit crew and not treat it well. And it's just going to, they're going to work slower. So you can do some active recovery. So this is low intensity movement that can help boost circulation, perhaps get more blood flow to the.

to the tissue that is damaged. So blood flow is oxygen, it's nutrition. And so we want to get some great nutrition to this tissue. This kind of got a little wear and tear on it. active recovery. So you could go for a walk. You could do some gentle body weight exercises, but really gentle, move your body around a little bit. That can help decrease some of the sensation of some soreness. You could also do foam rolling and gentle massage.

So this may reduce the pain perception. Now does massage and foam rolling mean that, you know, if you have little microfibers and massaging, let's say if you have, let's say you have micro tears in your quadriceps muscle because you've done a run. Now massaging or foam rolling these little micro tears doesn't suddenly glue them together. That's not how it works. We have tissue that has been, think of it as being literally torn.

in your body through all of this magic, which far exceeds what I'm going to talk about with this podcast, but through this magic is trying to bond and recover and recover even stronger in that process. We need to be gentle with it. So massaging fine. Be gentle with it. Foam rolling. Sure. Do it. Be gentle with it. It should feel good while you, while you, while you are doing it. If for some reason,

your muscles are so tender to the touch. And I know I'll get some flack for this, but doing deep tissue. And I know some people love deep tissue massage, which I am not one of those people, doing deep tissue massage, digging in there or getting a, you know, little massage balls or something like that into tissue. That's already inflamed. It's already damaged. It's already trying to recover.

And if you stick an elbow or you get a massage therapist, they're to stick their forearm into your, into your quadricep muscle to get it to recover faster. You're crazy. That makes no sense whatsoever. The tissue is already inflamed. The tissue is already trying to heal and you're adding another insult to it. So gentle with the massage, gentle with the foam rolling. You should feel good. Great. Moving around with your body around, get some blood flow. Awesome.

What about cold water plunges or cold water, immersions or cryotherapy? The, for many people, it will give short-term relief. It doesn't really enhance adaptation. I was going to go back to the same comment I just said a minute ago. It can feel good while you're doing it. It still takes time for that tissue to fully heal and recover. But the name of the game, once you're deep into the doms, it's trying to just feel a little bit better while your bodies, while your pit crews in there working.

There has been some, some people report that compression garments can have like a modest benefit. can give those a try. I used to wear those when I raced full time. So some leg tights, like super tight. it was the thing to do back in the day. I know a lot of people do it now. I've seen them that are like, they're big inflatable ones now. And will that, you know, that compression or that, it's almost like a milking process with some of the new, new ones that are.

You know plug into the wall that that a massage in a movement pattern That the idea is to decrease some of the swelling or fluid in your legs. Will that happen? Yeah, I'm sure it does Does that mean that those there's no tissue that's been torn magically bonds instantly No, but again if it can give you a little bit of benefit

If it can at least make the environment for your pit crew to do what they need to do, a little bit better environment to work in. Great. Give it a go. What about NSAIDs? Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. They have been shown that can reduce pain, but it may actually blunt muscle gains if they are overused.

So they are, they're an anti-inflammatory. There's a lot of, I'll have to break out another episode of just doing anti-inflammatories because there's interesting schools of thought on this. The inflammatory process is absolutely a process to get your tissue to adapt to be stronger. you know, whatever, wherever your tissue adaptation is, trying to get from exercise that effort causes tissue inflammation. That's normal. Your body has a process of dealing with that.

in this case specifically to get stronger. Now, if you take an anti-inflammatory, you're basically cutting that natural process. are you impeding your body's natural process that we're just going to try to get stronger? You're stopping this multi-step series sequence of events from a baseline to control tissue trauma, to inflammation, to repair.

and repair back stronger. And by having an anti-inflammatory product put in the middle of that, are you stopping part of that normal process? Are you impairing your own recovery? Are you impairing the benefits of your recovery? I should say, mean, you could certainly take some medication and feel less pain, definitely, but are you actually blunting the gains that you actually suffered through to get?

That's a question and I don't have a great answer for that. But I can tell you that sleep, high quality protein, hydration, even Omega threes can support recovery. it is a comprehensive approach. This is not a quick sell. Here's the quick magic pill and you're going to be stronger and your doms are going to be, you know, disappear or never feel them again. It is a big comprehensive picture, the picture that we have to paint here. So

With your race car, the high performance car that you are, you gotta let the car cool down after the race. You gotta change the tires, you gotta refuel it. High quality materials, kinda rebuild things a little bit. Rest and nutrition are a huge part of this upgrade process for us internally, physiologically. We have to respect the process. Be patient with it. I say be patient with it. You don't have to be patient with it, I suppose. You could hate it. It doesn't matter. It takes a certain amount of time. But the key is...

It is a very natural process and what's fun, and this may sound weird, but it is fun if you take a time to explore how much stress you can apply to your body, how long it takes to recover, how long it takes to see and feel the benefits from the stress you've put on your body, whether that's a certain exercise you're doing, a certain workout you're doing, it's resistance training you're doing or cardiovascular training.

training that you're doing, like you're trying to move the needle. You're trying to cause a physiological change. If you can be curious about that, that process, it can be super interesting to really, really understand how your body works and how you can move the needle. And if you can be a student of your own health, you're probably going to live a long time. If you can be a student of your own health, understand that.

It's your body's always changing. So this is the other, I suppose, a caveat for people who are trying to get back into a regular exercise routine. So many clients that I've talked to or done consults with have this illusion that, I know I can do X ways the exercises. Cause I used to do that back when I trained, you know, an exercise before. And when I asked, when was the last time you consistently exercise for a lot of people I spend years if ever.

They've consistently, maybe they went through little spurts here and there where, you know, a few went to a gym for a few months or went swimming. I was in a swim class for a little while or a weren't running group for a little while. And then life, you know, chaos and life happens. The risk is us still identifying as being able to do those things that we used to do as opposed to identifying and saying, I want to be able to do those things again, but I'm not 20 years old anymore. I'm not 30 years old anymore.

hell, I'm not even 50 years old anymore. So our bodies change. And so as long as we stay curious and recognize that the stimulus, the response, the delayed onset muscle soreness, these things change over time. And so what used to work for us last year may not work for us next year. But let's sum up here with like the big picture. The big picture is we're looking at adaptation, not damage. So

DOMS is part of the process. is not the goal. It is not necessary for gains, but it's common when you have novel stimuli. It's common when you push a little bit more than your tissue can tolerate or a moderate more than a more, a moderate amount more than your body can tolerate. But we don't want to be trying to chase soreness. We want to chase progress. So let me say this again. Do not chase

Soreness chase progress. That is why you are training. That is why you're doing resistance training. That is why you're doing cardiovascular training is for progress. Hopefully you have a well-defined goal in mind where you can measure yourself and look and see how things are changing. Focus on what you're trying to change. Focus on measurable milestones along the way. Are you getting to where you want to be? Don't just focus on

being uncomfortable. Don't just focus on working out for the sake of working out and checking a box. Some people despise or just really struggle to exercise and they they're kind of doing it with their eyes closed and not really just thinking like I got to do. I'm supposed to do things that are really hard and things that kind of suck to be healthier when really it's I would encourage people to focus less on that and focus more on what are you trying to to be like?

What are you trying to grow? What are you trying to achieve and focus on the progress? Focus on that. And yes, on occasion, will you have muscle soreness? Of course. Will you be tired? Of course. But that in and of itself is definitely, definitely, not the goal. So your pit crew is trying to fix their wear and tear from the exercises you've done in the past couple of days. But they're not just trying to fix the damage, they're actually trying to

upgrade your vehicle. You're trying to, they're trying to upgrade you so you can come back stronger. So the one thing that I would suggest you do today to extend your health span is to

So the one thing you can do today to extend your health span is to learn how to train smarter and recover smarter. So this isn't about going brutally hard and being uncomfortable and sore all the time. That is a recipe for an unsustainable exercise routine. What is sustainable is having a plan, having a strategy, having measurements today.

compared to a month ago, compared to three or four months down the road, having a plan with a reasonable strategy, reasonable tactics that fit your real life. That done consistently will diminish your chances of having debilitating delayed onset muscle soreness, debilitating DOMs. It will help you sustain

a lifestyle that will get you stronger than you've probably ever been in your life, improve your cardiovascular health. But it does take being smarter, recovering smarter, focus on nutrition, focus on your movement. I want to this section over again.

So the one thing you can do today to extend your health span, to extend the duration of time in your life that you feel healthy, active, vibrant, resilient, durable, is to learn how to train smarter and recover smarter.

We can all suffer through a really hard workout, but it is not necessarily the best thing to do, especially if you find yourself with DOMS that last days and days and days on the regular. Once in a while, yes, once in a while, you're to push it a little bit too much. You're going to be sore for a couple of days, but that should be infrequent. DOMS is something that is an indication that your body has been challenged.

It's an indication you've had micro tears in your tissue. That's completely normal. Your body's going to fight to clean that up and build you back stronger than before. But the one thing you can do is have a plan where you have a solid preparatory phase, preparing your body for more rigorous things to come, then a gradual progression from there to keep slowly adding more resistance, adding more duration, adding more tissue load.

and always coming back and reassessing just to make sure that you are achieving the goals that you want and not just suffering for nothing. We don't want to do that.

If you would please drop a comment, let me know what you think about DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness. I shouldn't even say what you think about DOMS. Well, DOMS, suck. We don't like them. But let me know if you have any questions about DOMS or if there's any other things, aches or pains related, injury related, exercise, nutrition, sleep, emotional wellbeing, preventative care. That's what I love talking about. It's what I researching about and it's what I work with my clients on. And if you would

And if you would be ever so kind to follow my YouTube channel, that would be great. Or follow this on whatever podcast platform you're listening to. That would be awesome and greatly appreciated. And until next time, take care of your health. Try to avoid doms. Cheers.