Comment by donatj
Comment by donatj 17 hours ago
> Less pain
Is there anything to back this up? The people I know who work out are always complaining about their muscles and joints.
Comment by donatj 17 hours ago
> Less pain
Is there anything to back this up? The people I know who work out are always complaining about their muscles and joints.
Soreness isn't ideal. It won't make you stronger. Actually, it might make your recovery slower.
First time I've ever heard that soreness = something wrong. Isn't soreness basically guaranteed to some degree if you've done enough work to actually build strength?
> Isn't soreness basically guaranteed to some degree if you've done enough work to actually build strength?
Not really. If you're eating/sleeping well and training consistently it's completely normal to not feel soreness (that is, excluding the immediate discomfort that rapidly subsides). I can't speak for all forms of exercise, but certainly it's normal when lifting weights, even to failure.
That said, if you're just starting out you will notice a lot of soreness. Many people look back on the early DOMS and wish they could feel that sort of "positive feedback" again.
It depends. But as GP also said, it can be because one is not exercising (that part of the body) regularly. Anecdotally, I have seen that soreness is not really observed when exercising regularly. Some aches and a little fatigue? Probably. But not really muscle soreness.
I suggest reading or listening to Dr. Andy Galpin on this topic.
> There's a difference between soreness and pain.
Sorry, but overexerted muscle feels exactly the same for me as the one hit with something hard and heavy or one that received a dozen injections that had a bit of tissue damage as a side effect.
> Usually joint pain means that you're doing some sort of exercise incorrectly
Joint and ligament pain means that you do too much of exactly what you are doing and you should do something at least a bit different. There's no such thing as correct or incorrect. You can do literally anything, just not too much. You only need to be careful because for some movements in some people 1 rep is too much already.
There's a big difference between recovery pain and chronic pain. Also, if someone has joint pain, they are doing the wrong exercises. For example, running trashes my knees, but biking does not. Also, picking up heavy shit (weights - squats and deadlifts) is the only thing that resolved lower back pain (from sitting all day).
Doing anything more than you should will trash something in your body. How much of something you should be doing? Pain is a good indicator. I you are below 40 you shouldn't feel it at all. If you are above, you should feel it a bit and observe it closely while reducing the load. If it gets weaker with time, you have appropriate load, if it doesn't or gets stronger, your load is still too high.
Everybody has bad everything. We are walking wrecks about to fall apart in few short decades. But there's genetic variety. There are dozens of variants of genes that code something as essential as collagen. Some resulting in very crappy kind. Some really do have it worse. That's why everybody needs to be listening to their bodies and apply themselves accordingly.
Some ways to exercise avoid injury & get results, and some.. don’t.
I’m a triathlete of 4 years now - love to be sore but have never been injured & unable to train.
There are three things you must do:
1. good technique: lift with the right muscles, run at the right cadence & target heart rate.
2. listen to your body when it needs less or more load.
3. treat recovery as equally important as exercise itself. Exercise’s mirror.
That said, instead of actual complaints, your friends might be social signaling! Bringing it up to bond over the joy of exercise. Humans do that subconsciously, and there is a ton of joy to bond over!
Why do people feel the need to waste time commenting about whether or not a comment is LLM-generated?
If you think the comment doesn't belong here, downvote or flag it. That goes for things you think are LLM-generated or human-generated. Commenting about LLM-generated speculation is just noise, and I regret spending this time replying to you on this topic when I could be doing absolutely anything else.
Why do people feel the need to waste time complaining about how speculation on whether a comment is LLM-generated is a waste of time?
If you think the speculation doesn’t belong here, downvote or flag it. That goes for speculation you dislike and generally any comment. Commenting about the value of speculation is just noise, and I regret spending this time replying to you on this topic when I could be doing absolutely anything else.
I've wondered about that too.
My personal thoughts and anecdote, assuming you're not talking about the kind of "bro I got in a killer workout yesterday, my biceps are still sore" Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness humblebragging:
I have a controlled autoimmune disorder like arthritis that causes me some joint pain. But it basically goes away if I do regular strength training. If you do strength training or any sport long enough you'll eventually hurt yourself. Usually that's just a pulled muscle because you woke up on the wrong side of the bed and it goes away after a few days. These micro-injuries actually seem to happen to me a lot, probably because of my condition I'm just prone to this stuff. But I prefer it to the pains of inactivity.
Even for people without arthritis, you have a question to answer: which would you rather suffer from? The pains from not working, out like having a weak core and bad posture and the discomfort of being unable to climb a few sets of stairs? Or the pains from working out, like pulling a back muscle because you didn't warm up or some shin or knee pain from too much running?
The answer is obvious to me. You're going to get hurt either way. I'll go with the path that makes me feel better, live longer, look hotter, and is a rewarding challenge.
When you start working out, you will have soreness in your muscles from lactic acid because your body isn’t used to it.
Once you get in a routine of doing it at least twice a week you won’t get that soreness anymore. People who start working out, then miss a month, then start back experience it all the time. Consistency is key.
When you start drinking something like unsweetened tea, initially it's almost unbearably bitter. But as you drink it long enough, it feels less and less bitter. It didn't get any less bitter, you just impaired your ability to sense this kind of bitterness.
I wonder what happens with muscle soreness. Do they get actually get less sore after consistent exercise? Or do you just blunt your nervous system into not detecting chemical signatures of the damage? I'm guessing it's the second case because people here are commenting that after exercising long enough you can still have gains but no pain of muscle soreness.
From personal experience strength training has been key to recovering from injuries (caused by doing stupid things, not exercise itself). So maybe the correlation between exercise and pain is incorrect? The exercise is the cure to the pain...
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-5753318/v1 (pre-print) seems to provide a strong argument for strength training being beneficial. My search was not thorough so likely more studies out there.
Anecdotally, weight training eliminated my chronic shoulder and hip pains from sitting at a desk. I’ve read several similar stories but I’d be interested to see studies on this.
For me personally: My fitness routines are regular but sloppy.
I’m often complaining about soreness here, a lightly pulled there, a big joint that needs to be left alone for a few days. It’s annoying but also even kinda satisfying, and I know how to avoid serious injury.
I’m not complaining about lower back pain because my fitness activity has rid me of it. That pain would have stopped me from being able to move easily, work on my cabin, play with children, and would have eventually made me overweight and chronically ill.
The tradeoff is really a no-brainer in my case, and I don’t think my case is so unique.
Physical activity triggers the production of endorphins, specifically beta-endorphins, which are natural painkillers.
Every life long runner I know has had a serious knee problem or other injury.
But I think running is higher impact on the body that a lot of of other exercise. You're putting your full body weight on a small area several times a second for many minutes every day.
I'm not talking about myself and I haven't evaluated the running form of the people I know.
But impact is just force and time and the high pressure is because contact is being made with your foot, which has a small surface area.
You can find hammers that absorb shocks better than others, but ultimately it's driving the nail because of impact and pressure. (Small hammer head striking quickly).
I don't doubt that proper form, correct training, and other interventions can reduce running injuries. But they're the most frequent exercise injuries I've seen personally and they also appear common statistically.
(Of course running is more accessible than, say, jai alai so base rates are higher anyway)
If folks are regularly sore and their goals are not some lofty races or even higher and further down the progression path, they are doing it wrong.
You should feel the exercise and specific muscles afterwards, sometimes even a day after (like hamstrings and thighs from squats, those don't get much workout during normal life), but after initial beginner phase the continuous long term goal is to get enough workout that muscles are not sore, just notch below. Properly sore muscle needs few days rest, a well used one can be again fully loaded in 48h easily.
And overall definitely less pain or more like 0 pain, ie back from weak core is pretty typical. Another one are knees, but to train knees around some already-damaged tissues is more tricky, but definitely worth it.
After starting weightlifting (on top of some sports like ski touring, climbing, hiking etc) I can handle much more, heavier and longer. Need to move your/friend stuff to another apartment? All day carrying with them feels like mild stretch, compared to them complaining for back pain for another 3 days.
There's a difference between soreness and pain. My muscles get sore all the time from exercise, but it's not painful. That soreness just tells me I'm probably going to be a little bit stronger because of the exercise I just did. (Of course it's a continuum: certain higher levels of soreness mean I probably overdid it.)
Joint pain is a whole other thing, though. Usually joint pain means that you're doing some sort of exercise incorrectly, or that you're using too much weight or intensity for your current level of physical fitness. Or you have a previous injury that can't fully heal and there are some exercises that you just shouldn't be doing, but you do them anyway.
But I think the author is talking about less pain in a different way. For example, I threw out my lower back 25 years ago in college, and it's never been the same since. But doing core exercises and strengthening the muscles around that area means much less chance of pain doing regular day-to-day activities.