Is Soreness a Sign of a Good Workout?

We've all heard the slogans about feeling the 'burn' and don't stop when it hurts, stop when you're done (for the record, these give me the ick)

The question is, just how sore should you be after a workout and is soreness an indicator of a 'good' workout?

First things first, how sore is too sore?

There's a few things to think about when we look at how much we should be feeling our workouts afterwards. Of course we want our bodies to feel like they have actually done something. That goes without saying. But do we want to feel so sore, we're struggling to walk up the stairs? Probably not.

If you're too sore, you're likely going to reduce your overall activity levels throughout the day. If it hurts walking up the stairs, guess what, you're going to do it a lot less.

You also want to look at how many workouts you want to do across a week. If one workout makes you sore for 3 days straight, when will you fit in your other sessions?

Feeling sore after a workout is a sign that your muscles have been worked hard, in order for muscle tissue to grow, we need to damage and break down the fibers to achieve this. This means we're looking to find that balance. The place where you feel you have done a workout but you're not incapacitated and unable to get out or bed.

Now we've established that feeling sore is part and parcel of working out, the key is to not be so sore, you can't do anything else for the rest of the week.

How else do we benefit and what other things should we be paying attention to during and after our workouts?

What are the other benefits of exercise?

Your Mood is boosted every time you do a workout, no matter how difficult the workout is. Moving your body helps to improve your mood and mental wellbeing.

Your Bones get stronger when we exercise, specifically when we lift weights and put impact through our bones. This is really important for women as we get older and enter perimenopause.

Your Heart gets stronger. Aerobic exercise improves circulation, which results in lowered blood pressure and heart rate. It also improves your cardiac output, how well your heart pumps.

Your Flexibility, Balance and Coordination, all improve with regular physical activity and exercise. When we exercise we help to strengthen the brain and body connection.

So you see, there is SO MUCH MORE to your workout that just how sore you feel. Finding that, takes a bit of trial and error!

The important thing to consider here is that feeling sore is not the only thing you can achieve from a workout. If you're not sure if you're training too hard or not hard enough, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

I know how much conflicting information there is out there about how we should feel post-workout. Remember you know your body better than anybody else.