Ways to Handle Muscle Soreness

Straining your body with many activities or a rigorous workout routine can leave your muscles feeling tight and sore. While uncomfortable, most muscle soreness is a normal part of the exercise process and signals that your muscles are stressed and are now becoming stronger. However, you can take steps to help alleviate this muscle soreness while your body recovers.

Heat Therapy

Sore muscles can benefit from strategically applied heat. Applying a hot compress to an area where muscles are sore not only feels good but helps to increase blood flow to the area in question. Increased blood flow brings essential oxygen and nutrients to those muscles, giving them everything they need to heal faster.

Massage

Like heat, massage is another great way to increase the blood flow to certain areas of your body. This can help muscles heal faster and relax your mind as your body recovers. Make sure you communicate with your massage therapist, so they don’t push too hard on sore muscles. The massage may feel a bit uncomfortable but should not be painful. Too much pain could damage your muscles more and increase healing time. 

Good Nutrition

Making sure your body has the nutrients to help your muscles heal can also speed up the recovery process. In addition to healthy meals that have a range of vitamins and minerals, you should ensure that you get enough protein during recovery. Furthermore, drinking plenty of water is necessary for the healing process. On the other hand, drinking too much alcohol or smoking frequently could lengthen recovery time as your body has to spread its energy between healing your muscles or dealing with other toxins.

Listen To Your Body

The most important thing for building muscle and dealing with soreness is to listen to your body and get enough rest for proper recovery. Make sure to schedule enough rest days and get plenty of sleep to ensure that you can fully recover before diving back into stressful exercises.