Muscle soreness is felt the day after more often than the day of a workout. If a person has a workout in the morning they may feel tired or fatigued in the region they worked in the morning but it usually isn’t sore. The soreness kicks in the day or 2 afterwards. Why is that? Why isn’t it sore the day of later on?
In: Biology
Soreness is caused by the repair process, which doesn’t kick in until a day or so later. Your body “knows” that healing is best done when the stress event is over, so there is a day or so of lag to ensure that you’ve past the period where you _need_ the muscles and are more likely to be in a period where repair can be optimal.
That is also why it hurts to push sore muscles – your body is trying to get you to take it easy to the repair process can finish.
Is it better to take a rest day if your muscles are sore for more than 2 days? Let’s say i am a beginner who has just been working out for a few weeks.
You ever have a big pothole in your road, or like it needed repaving? When the damage is being done by the constant traffic or big trucks or ice it still looks pretty normal all things considered. But then the construction crew shows up. Puts out the cones and the signs, flaggers out directing traffic, trucks with rollers and excavators. They get all set up and then the trucks show up with the stone and asphalt etc and everyone is on your little road and there are people and trucks everywhere. And then they all roll out and the road looks great again. The soreness you’re feeling is the crews and trucks doing repairs. It takes them a day or so to get there and get all setup, looks nice when they’re done though doesn’t it?
There’s not really all that available information about it, we don’t really know for sure.
But it seems like the soreness is a result of the recovery process, so likely case is that your body doesn’t start reparing before you go to bed. I’ve never had my doms delayed more than a nights rest, except for cases where I slept poorly so I would guess that those nights with poor sleep didn’t start the recovery process enough to cause doms.
Any answer to this question is going to be speculation or just a flat out lie. The short answer to this question is nobody knows.
If DOMS was related to the repair process, like the top comment claims, then you’d get DOMS after any sort of weight training. But that’s not the case. You only get it if you use muscles that haven’t been trained in a long time.
Another post claims it’s due to the damage to your muscles. Well then it would start hurting right away. The micro tears in the muscles occur when you do the movement. So that’s not correct either.
The only correct answer to this question is unfortunately, ‘we don’t know’
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