I have a lot of clients who ask me as a yoga teacher and as a physical therapist if what they are feeling after doing certain types of activities is soreness or pain. I want to talk about this because it can sometimes be confusing for a person especially if they haven’t been moving their body in a while so they forget what certain things feel like when they are moving their muscles. This can also happen when doing a new activity and the person does not expect feeling certain things after doing the activity.
Recently, I had a tennis lesson and we were reworking some of my ground strokes. The morning after I had the lesson, I was pretty sore. I was feeling sore in the new muscles that have not been chatty before in the many years I’ve been playing tennis. One of the things you should know that causes soreness is learning a new motion or recruiting new muscles for a new movement pattern. This is especially true if you did the new motion or movement over and over again.
To help you understand the difference between being sore and being in pain, read more below about the three questions you can ask so you can gauge yourself better.
1. Does It Get Worse With Sitting Or Being Still?
If it does, it leans towards muscle soreness. This is not the case all the time, but I would say most often than not, if you feel this way, it is muscle soreness.
In relation to this, what happens after you do an activity where you did a motion over and over again, lactic acid build up takes place. The muscles are working hard and the lactic acid is what they let go of to continue to work hard during the movement. If you have a certain amount of lactic acid build-up, you will experience soreness around those areas.
When you have been sitting for a while and lactic acid is building up in the muscle, the soreness will increase. You can notice that it might be difficult to transition from sitting to standing when this happens. However, once you start moving, then the soreness can decrease. On the other hand, if it is pain, moving around doing a certain activity will result to an increase in the sensation you are feeling. Further, if it is pain, if you sit or be still, it will decrease the pain.
Another thing you can experience when doing a movement over and over again is a micro tears within the muscle. It isn’t bad because this is the way it makes space for the muscle to grow more. This could also cause soreness.
2. Is It Getting Better After Two To Three Days?
If the soreness or the sensation you are experiencing in your muscles is decreasing over a two to three-day period, it tends to be soreness rather than pain.
3. Did It Come On During The Activity Or Did It Come On About 24 To 48 Hours After The Activity?
If you are doing the activity and you feel some discomfort, it is most likely pain brought on by some mechanical thing. It if does not come on until later, that tends to be muscle soreness because it takes a little bit more time for the lactic acid to build up within your tissue for the feeling to be noticed within the body.
These are the questions you can ask yourself and I hope it will help alleviate your worries as to the possibility of being injured.
Note also that soreness can be a painful sensation, but it does not necessarily mean that you injured yourself or something went wrong. It can also be overwhelming because sometimes soreness can be uncomfortable.
Another thing to consider with soreness is you have to have a proper rest and recovery period. For example, after playing tennis the night before and I feel sore in the morning, I will most likely skip playing tennis soon. This does not mean that I just have to sit all day or not move at all. It means that I will make it an active rest period and do some walking or some type of yoga to help move my muscles in a different way to decrease the soreness.
If you do not rest and recover appropriately, that soreness could eventually turn into pain or some type of injury that is persistent. So really, resting and recovering should be done properly to give time for the muscles to feel better.
Know that if you are still unsure if it is pain or soreness, you can always check in with your physical therapist. They will be happy to help you feel better and feel more confident in the types of movement you are doing.