Sore Muscles Won't go Away!

[Philosofist]

My entire body is very sore from a recent Sunday training session, in particular my legs hurt around the hamstrings and quads when I sit, stand, walk, or move pretty much. The soreness has lasted 4 days. Does anyone have any insight or reccomendations to improve the soreness?

[monk]

cardio, Gene. do light cardio workouts, or go for a jog/run. basically move around and move a lot!

[Philosofist]

Thanks, I went sparring. Twas the cure!

[SafeNSure]

Hahaha! Gene, welcome back to training!!!
:)

If it can be of any consolation, even a pretty steady practitioner (at a very experienced age...) like me, still gets sore for a good 24/36 hours after intensive practice. Yet there's a variety of things that one can do to reduce/control that before, during and after training:

- hydrate plenty: I mean, we all know it, but we don't always do it. Every-body is different but a -ballpark- average could be half a gallon of water in the 6 hours around training, and a full gallon in the 24 hours. You have to drink before you're thirsty! It may not sound much and some people will greatly outdo that (especially in Summer), but there's still peeps showing up at training without a water-bottle...

- warm up thoroughly! Stretching per se (especially "cold") before training won't do (especially static stretching!!!), but warming up for real will significantly enhance your performance and your recovery time.

- especially in the cold season, do not cool down: a lot of what we do is really explosive, and is meant to be done at high intensity/pace/focus. Sometimes our training gets a bit too colloquial/social and we end up chatting for 5 minutes before attempting a series of really challenging wall-runs... it's a no-no for soreness; you may have to warm up again, or specifically for that technique.

- stretch thoroughly at the end of session ("statical" ok; 10 minutes bare minimum), and maybe stretch again (much more gently!) specific areas at night or the following morning.

- rest your body: get serious sleep before and after training.

Finally, this good article on "cramping" can be related to soreness: as Jodie suggested, mild activity will improve soreness (as Reciprocal Inhibition will fight cramps), but the real solution is prevention through correct training, "thorough warm-up, healthy diet and proper hydration".

Thanks for bringing this up as a reminder for everybody.

[Philosofist]

Hey thank you for all your resourcefulness and your resourceful resources! xD

[Atsushi]

oh man I know how you feel. I once had a intensive parkour training and then I had a dance show the very night and it hurt alot during the show. It took almost 8 days for my leg to get even a little relaxed by day 10 (I'm not kidding) I was able to walk down stairs w/o sidestepping again.

[kingtheking]

eat alot of protein, treat yourself to a massive skirt steak!