by Lloyd Shaw
Why doesn’t it hurt as much as I thought it would the next day?
This is a question I hear often, as it usually makes no sense to a person who has done one of what seems to be the hardest workout of their life, but can still walk the next day.
This article should really be called TRUE delayed muscle soreness and Vibration Training, as most pain felt the day after a regular workout is false. By this I mean the damage done is not just isolated to the muscle itself where we want it, but to the tendons and other tissues as well. That’s what causes the sharp pain at certain points in the body the following day. True delayed muscle soreness actually feels like you are coming down with the flu, a more deep seated aching inside the muscles rather than direct sharp pain, but nothing that would stop you from training the next day.
A lot of people, even well educated trainers, get confused over the whole “no pain no gain” mantra and if it hurts a lot the next day, you must have done a great workout. Think about this, muscle damage is done during most exercise and serious pain is a way of our bodies telling us “not” to do something again. Do you really think our bodies would have come up with a way to warn us off exercise? Of course not, so sharp pain following exercise is not meant as a warning to stay away from that activity, but instead depicts we have done something “wrong” during that activity.
So what did we do wrong?
First, to understand this, we need to get a clear picture of why we feel pain. It comes from nerve endings placed around the body, some in clusters for highly sensitive crucial areas, and others in sparse supply for less crucial zones. We see this quite visually when a tribe from say Africa will put a sharp stick through their body in certain places and seem relatively comfortable with it. How do they do this? By learning from practice where the major nerve clusters are and missing them. Trust me they are not that tough, kick them in the nuts and they will go down like everybody else. Which funny enough is where heaps of nerves are located in us guys, giving us the incentive to protect them at all costs. Bang them up too often and no-one’s ever going to call you daddy.
So now we can understand that nerves are heavily located in areas of the body that it doesn’t want us to damage. In a workout sense, this would be the tendons and other more solid tissue. Why ? Because they do not repair as quickly as muscle tissue which can normally be back to full function in only 3 days. If our tendons get damaged, it would leave us weak and defenseless for long periods of time. Unfortunately, most exercise involves random movement and energy placement that usually means tears and damage to tissue that’s not meant to be damaged. Hence the sharp warning we get the next day telling us simply ” whatever it was you did yesterday, don’t do it again thanks “.
How does Vibration Training get around this?
In a static high energy workout almost all the energy is deliberately placed into the “girth” ( widest point ) of the muscle were the cells can jointly do their job the best and burn the most energy. This is done by placing you in poses at precise angles designed to do exactly that, which is why leaving the perfect angle is not sensible on a powerful machine. The whole point is to get all the benefits of a hard workout with none of the traditional negatives. The muscles are being worked extensively but the tendons aren’t being damaged.
