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Is Soreness a Good Method for Judging Workout Effectiveness
10-30-2014, 01:30 AM
So right now I judge whether or not I got a good workout in by how sore I am in the days following a workout. Is soreness a good indicator of growth in the muscle and ability to do more weight/reps the next workout?
I usually only get sore in my pecs, quads, glutes, and biceps. Nothing else really gets sore and I'm worried I'm not working out these other areas hard enough or if there's another issue at hand.
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Is Soreness a Good Method for Judging Workout Effectiveness
10-30-2014, 06:49 AM
Soreness is not a reliable indicator.
What can indicate progress is either do the same amount of work in less time, or more work in the same amount of time.
This is generally why unstructured programs like 50/20 are so effective, especially for people who are unclear on where and how to progress. It's easy. You have twenty minutes to do fifty reps of something.
Say you pick chinups, and the first time you do the workout you can do 39. Next time you can do 44.
Eventually you will hit 50 and after a few successful workouts of 50 you should consider hanging a five or ten pound weight off your belt and starting over. Or increasing the chinups to 65 and starting over. Or you can try to do 50 chinups in 18 minutes. Whatever you want your workout goal to be.
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Is Soreness a Good Method for Judging Workout Effectiveness
10-31-2014, 08:39 PM
Soreness is as reliable an indicator as sweating - i.e not at all. The dumb general population (esp women) tend to think that if they sweat a lot during a workout and get very sore afterwards, they're doing great. Usually it just means they sweat a lot and get sore, while their body composition and strength/fitness level go nowhere. This is why you see lots of fatties sitting in the sauna and doing weird useless pilates poses.
There are lots of things that cause soreness, and even sports science is only scratching the surface, not fully understanding it. Some things that cause soreness can make it a useless indicator for strength improvement or hypertrophy:
- Bad movement quality - moving poorly hurts the muscles more, but it doesn't mean you're getting better.
- Inactive / lagging muscle groups - this causes other muscle groups to pick up the slack, work too hard and get very sore, but again you're getting nowhere.
- Shock to the nervous system - if you're doing something very new and extreme, you can shock the CNS so much that you get this weird floating pain in the body (to explain it casually): one day it's here, the next day it's there with no indication that the painful area was actually overworked in anyway. In weird cases, you can work one arm really hard and the next day the *other* arm gets sore.
- The body getting too used to the stimulus: if you do something regularly enough (e.g squat everyday) your body gets used to it (like getting used to a bad smell) and you don't feel sore anymore. That doesn't mean the muscle fibers aren't damaged and getting repaired.
Rely on objective measures instead, like what you do in a real sport. Nobody says "I can run faster now because I'm more sore than usual after running". If you can lift more weights, more reps or more sets, you're getting stronger. If your DEXA scan tells you your lean body mass has increased, you're getting bigger (or use measuring tapes if you want a simpler method).
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Is Soreness a Good Method for Judging Workout Effectiveness
11-01-2014, 02:28 AM
Damn, i thought you guys were going to come in saying soreness is a good way to judge an individual workout. Never underestimate the RVF. I need to be tracking my numbers more closely it seems. Thanks all.
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Is Soreness a Good Method for Judging Workout Effectiveness
11-03-2014, 12:18 AM
Soreness is an inflammatory response to stress and can be attributed to a variety of factors included but not limited to: detrained condition, dehydration, excessive stimulus, illness, etc.
It's not really an indicator of "workout effectiveness". In fact, it's a poor one because it's likely going to affect your training negatively at some point. The primary and most essential purpose of training is to titrate stress intelligently and make progressive improvements over time. If you're sore all the time, you're fucking with this process and chances are you'll likely abandon it at some point.
The most noteworthy cause of soreness is excessive eccentric contraction, which is why you occasionally encounter stories of CrossFitters suffering from Rhabdo, particularly on workouts in which high-rep BW movements (BW squat and chins being the most common) are involved.
This is why movements that incorporate concentric contraction only don't get you sore, and are actually quite an effective palliative for recovery. Pushing the prowler is a perfect example.
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Is Soreness a Good Method for Judging Workout Effectiveness
11-03-2014, 12:22 AM
Nope. Muscle = Caloric Surplus + Progressive Overload.
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Is Soreness a Good Method for Judging Workout Effectiveness
11-07-2014, 07:49 PM
I actually think the best indicator of the effectiveness of a workout is how it makes you feel. Not if you're sore or not but did you enjoy it enough to want to repeat it and take it to another level. I was a college athlete and our strength coaches would come up with some crazy stuff... While their focus was improvement for sports performance there are still workouts they put together I pull out from time to time and do.
in the long run the motivation to keep going with a shitty training plan will take you further than being unmotivated with the perfect plan.
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Is Soreness a Good Method for Judging Workout Effectiveness
11-09-2014, 12:39 PM
A muscle becomes sore as a result of micro-tears in the individual contractile cells that result from large amounts of force being placed upon it. They tear and repair themselves after being overloaded, ex. when there is a greater amount of force placed upon it.
Eccentric movement (when your muscle lengthens under tension; think the down part of a pullup, pushup or squat) can provide much more force than concentric movement (the up part) can because obviously when you cant do anymore pushups, you will still be able to lower yourself to the ground in a controlled fashion.
Therefore, if the movement you are doing has momentum involved in the eccentric portion (a kipping pull up) that muscle is having much more force exerted upon it in the eccentric phase to slow down your momentum and change the direction of your weight than just the standard pull up would. That will make you sore.
If you deadlift and drop the bar to the floor after standing up all the way, you've only done the concentric part of the movement. This is a way to get in a lot of volume without become sore. Lowering your deadlifts slowly will make you sore without nearly as much volume.
All this said, does using the eccentric portion of a lift make you stronger or bigger than doing more volume of only a concentric movement? I doubt it.
Case study: Crossfitter vs. Guy who does regular pullups.
Crossfitter cant do nearly as many strict pullups because he practices kipping pullups, even though they make him really sore because of a huge amount momentum involved in the eccentric swing down.
Crossfitter will not be able to do a weighted pullup with as much weight because he isn't practicing the concentric part of the movement, instead relying on a huge eccentric contraction to bounce his chin back over the bar.
Soreness does not equal gains, however sometimes gains will equal soreness.
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Is Soreness a Good Method for Judging Workout Effectiveness
11-23-2014, 11:38 PM
I don't think so.Soreness is not a good indicator.
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Is Soreness a Good Method for Judging Workout Effectiveness
11-25-2014, 12:08 PM
For me the only thing I rely on as a measure of progress is more weight on the bar or more reps with a given weight (I record everything and time rest periods to make sure I have a reliable measure).
I do however, find the feeling of soreness to be very satisfying.
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Is Soreness a Good Method for Judging Workout Effectiveness
11-26-2014, 05:12 AM
If soreness was a good indicator of workout effectiveness, not eating enough food and not sleeping enough would boost your next gym performance.
1. You get more sore when you don't eat enough.
2. You get more sore when you don't sleep enough.
3. You get more sore when you drink alcohol afterwards.
4. You get most sore when you first start working out.
Yes, you do get more sore when you lift harder. But for me it's a better indication of my shitty lifestyle or having previously ignored those muscles. First time doing abs in months? Next day I can't sit up straight.
Judge your workout: Am I completely depleted after my last set (e.g. can't-talk, need-food, light-headed) this workout and am I getting stronger and stronger over time, from one workout to the next?