How to Relax Sore Muscles and Maintain Flexibility After Strength Training. Strong muscles do not negate good joint mobility.
Does strength training really make you less flexible?
Indeed, strength training can make it feel like stretching becomes more difficult as your muscle mass increases.
The authors of one systematic review and meta-analysis examined eight scientific studies and found that muscle stiffness increases within an hour of strength training. However, after two days, muscles return to normal.
In addition, strength training often damages muscles and connective tissue, causing inflammation to build up. If this happens, 24-72 hours after a hard workout, a person will feel stiff and clogged, and any movement on cold muscles will make him sigh and curse.
The range of motion in the joint is also reduced. However, this is a temporary effect that goes away along with the inflammation. As soon as the delayed muscle pain, or, in other words, muscle soreness, disappears, the person regains flexibility.
In the long run, resistance training does not make muscles stiffer. In fact, if a person does strength training, their joints will be more flexible than those who do nothing.
A systematic review and meta-analysis of 55 scientific studies found that resistance training increases joint range of motion and does so as well as stretching.
Of course, strength training can only increase your mobility to the range you use during exercise. In other words, squatting with a barbell won’t help you do the splits. But it will stretch your muscles so that you can squat “butt to the floor” without bending over or lifting your heels off the ground.
So, you don’t have to worry about going to the gym and turning into a wooden soldier. But you should expect your range of motion to be slightly reduced immediately after strength training, as well as for 1-3 days after a hard workout that causes muscle soreness.
If you are scared of even such a small decrease and want to be as flexible as possible all the time, regardless of whether you have done strength training or not, do not skip stretching. Strength and flexibility can go together, you just need to develop both. This is the most effective exercise for a strong core
What can help relieve the feeling of stiffness in clogged muscles
We have selected the most proven methods for restoring flexibility after strength training. But even they have been little studied, so we will not claim that they are 100% effective. And we will not rule out that the advice will help either.
Take a short cool down after your workout
Two systematic reviews and meta-analyses have confirmed that active recovery—light exercise performed after a hard workout—helps relieve muscle soreness.
One review found that a 6-10 minute cool-down after a hard workout helps speed up the removal of lactic acid and improves athletes’ performance. However, their conclusions were based on studies that included only 471 participants.
However, it is believed that a short cool-down helps switch the body’s state from the stress of training to a calmer recovery mode.
As for the exercises themselves, you can choose light cardio : jogging, pedaling on a stationary bike or elliptical trainer, swimming or dynamic stretching.
Perform static stretching
You don’t have to do static stretching after your workout as a cool-down. You can do it anytime you have free time – for example, add 10-15 minutes of exercise before bed.
Stretching won’t help you get rid of muscle soreness or speed up recovery, but it will definitely help reduce muscle stiffness and increase the range of motion in your joints.
The authors of one study checked 23 scientific articles and found that, in principle, any stretching method is effective, but static stretching — the one in which you hold one position — provides the best results. It is also extremely simple and safe, and is familiar to anyone who went to dance, gymnastics, or martial arts as a child.
It is best to do it for at least 5 minutes a week and do it more often. For example, you can stretch the muscles you want to lengthen for 60 seconds on weekdays.
If you don’t have the time or desire to hold stretching poses for long, you can reduce the time in the position to 30 seconds. This should not affect your progress much. At least if you practice regularly.
Go to a massage or give yourself one
Scientists suggest that the increased blood flow during massage suppresses the accumulation of neutrophils, immune system cells that rush to damaged tissue to eat up tissue breakdown products. This may partially prevent inflammation and relieve muscle soreness, but only in theory.
Two systematic reviews and meta-analyses have confirmed that massage is one of the best means of relieving delayed-onset muscle pain and reducing inflammation. However, this method of recovery is difficult to study, because muscles can be massaged in different ways – lightly or deeply, with the help of hands or a device, quickly in five minutes or fully in half an hour. And since each study uses its own technique and duration of the procedure, the effect of any massage cannot be guaranteed.
In addition, the procedure is expensive and requires free time, so few can afford it on a regular basis. About five years ago in Russia, people began to pay attention to percussion massagers or, in other words, massage guns. This is a device with a moving head that moves back and forth in a small amplitude and “beats” the muscles, exerting a shock and vibration effect.
A systematic review of 13 studies found that percussion massagers can help reduce muscle pain and maintain flexibility. However, the research included in the study is not particularly high quality, and the article itself was published in a less than reliable journal, so the massage gun is not a well-proven recovery method.
Rolling out muscles on a massage roller
The easiest way to massage tight muscles is to roll on a foam roller . This method is also called myofascial release. The roller is cheaper than a percussion massager, and you can use it both after a workout and during recovery, and before a workout.
The method is quite popular, but there is little evidence of its effectiveness.
There is one study in which 20 minutes of rolling on a roller immediately after exercise reduced muscle soreness in participants and helped them remove limitations in mobility. However, the scientists only invited eight healthy men to participate in the experiment. Therefore, the conclusions cannot be trusted unconditionally.
In another study, myofascial release helped increase the range of motion in the knee joint without reducing strength indicators. But here too, there were too few participants – 11. Therefore, the work also cannot be used as good evidence.
There is also a systematic review of 49 studies in which myofascial release alleviated muscle pain after exercise. However, the quality of the journal in which this study was published leaves much to be desired.
So, despite some scientific evidence, you shouldn’t consider rolling as a panacea for muscle soreness. But you can try it and see if it helps you.
Before your workout, roll the muscle on a foam roller for 90 to 120 seconds. This can reduce stiffness and improve the range of motion in the joint. Or combine this method with an active warm-up and dynamic stretching .
