Can I Exercise While My Muscles Are Sore?

By Nick Nilsson

Generally, we are warned to ease off training when our muscles are sore.  But is this advice correct, or could you actually improve your results by training with sore muscles? Should I Train With Sore Muscles?  Find out here!

Why do muscles get sore after a workout? Never mind that and listen to this secret that I am going to tell you

Well, we’ve all experienced sore muscles, which can vary from being just slightly uncomfortable to being downright excruciating and almost crippling.  Many trainers response to this problem is to say that you shouldn’t start training again until the soreness has completely gone away.  For many, I don’t argue that this is the safest answer, BUT I don’t believe that’s always the case.  In fact, I would go further and say that by not training sore muscles, you may well be missing a trick!

To put it very simply, when a muscle is sore, it’s telling you that it has been damaged.  Now, if you’ve read my other articles, you will know that a damaged muscle is, actually, potential for growth.  Why? Because damaged muscles are hungry for nutrients to repair and regrow.  Regrowth is a muscle’s sole purpose in life when it has been damaged.  So, my theory is that, rather than rest the muscle and missing out on this hunger for nutrients and growth, you work the muscle and increase this need for nutrients and growth.  Don’t you think this would ramp the body up to prepare itself for the next onslaught by building bigger and better muscles?  I do!

Additionally, by training a sore muscle, you will be stimulating your body to send more blood to that area, more blood means more nutrients, and more nutrients mean quicker recovery.

However, if your muscle is so sore that it causes you to use poor form in your exercises, that is when I believe that you should give the area time to rest and recover.  Bad form can lead to injury and there is no way I would recommend something that could cause injury.

Now, I know that I’m recommending it works, because I’ve done it and seen the results for myself.  Being on vacation and with little to do, I embarked on the most extreme program that I’ve ever put myself through.  I certainly wouldn’t recommend this program lightly.

I did total body workouts twice a day for six days a week.  Not only that, every week I increased the workload.

In my program, I incorporated partial training, negative training, low reps, and high reps and, as you can imagine, I was extremely sore for the whole week.  But, I stuck with it and trained through the soreness.

After three weeks of this regime, I backed off a little.  I still did twelve training sessions a week, but I split the body in half, so I worked one half in the morning and the other half in the evening.  I was still, therefore, doing total body training each day.

During the back-off phase, I noticed that my recovery processes were incredible and nothing I did made me sore.  Not only that, my strength and muscle mass shot through the roof!

Now, the usual thinking about this harsh regime would say that, after a program such as this, I would be left overtrained, small and weak.  Well don’t you believe it!  I went from 208lbs to 228lbs, from a 295lbs bench press for one rep, to a 350lbs press for one rep.  AND I did a partial top-range lockout squat with 1100lbs for 150 reps.  Yes, honest and it’s not a typo!  All of this happened after a six week period of training as described above.

Like I said, I wouldn’t recommend the above regime lightly; I’m simply giving it as an example of what you can achieve by training when your muscles are sore.

Oh, and one final thing, why do muscles get sore after a workout? Because your not getting enough Vitamin C which protects against muscle soreness.  Try taking 500 mg of Vitamin C about an hour before your workout to decrease your post workout soreness.

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