Aching Two Days After Exercise

You may not notice it right after your exercise routine, but a day or two later, you'll probably feel that strenuous workout in the form of muscle pain and stiffness. Researchers and fitness instructors call this pain delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS. It's a common ailment for novices to a sport or exercise regimen and for longtime fitness enthusiasts who push themselves exceptionally hard during a workout.

Identification

You can differentiate DOMS from other pain associated with exercise. A strained or torn muscle would cause acute pain immediately when the injury happened, whereas DOMS takes days to develop and feels more like a chronic ache than a sharp jab of pain. Unlike the burning sensation of lactic acid buildup that you feel toward the end of a set or after a long run, DOMS doesn't disappear after a few minutes' rest. If your pain is at its greatest two days after exercise, it's likely DOMS.

Causes

Delayed onset muscle soreness occurs when tiny muscle fibers tear under stress. These micro-tears are not the same as injuries to the muscle; in fact, they're essential to the process of building more muscle tissue. As small filaments of muscle tissue break, they create sites for new muscle cells to grow. This microscopic disturbance of muscle fibers fires off pain nerves in the muscle as it heals, causing that deep ache you feel a day or two after strenuous exercise. You're more likely to encounter DOMS after exercising stretched muscle rather than contracted muscle.

Prevention

Stretching before a workout might help prevent DOMS, according to Declan A.J. Connolly's 2003 report on the condition's treatment and prevention published in the "Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research." Connolly's research indicated that "individuals with greater muscle stiffness appear to experience greater DOMS after eccentric exercise," which suggests that removing stiffness with a warm-up could help. Working up to a strenuous workout also reduces your risk of developing DOMS, so you may have less pain two days after your workout if you've been progressing for weeks. Give your body enough rest between exercise sessions to minimize your risk of DOMS.

Treatment

Once you've developed DOMS, you can't accelerate the healing process, but you can ease the symptoms of pain, swelling and stiffness. Anti-inflammatory medications like naproxen sodium or acetaminophen ease inflammation associated with DOMS and reduce pain. A cold compress may also relieve some of the ache, as it reduces swelling. Massage and gentle stretching might help you feel better too, although neither seems to influence DOMS' duration, according to Connolly's report. Once the pain of DOMS reaches its peak two days after exercise, it quickly fades. By the third day, it typically eases considerably, and disappears by the fourth day after exertion.