DOMs Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness — Liam George Physiotherapy

It’s the new year, you’ve made those resolutions, you’ve started eating healthily, you’ve joined a gym or purchased some at home DVD to give you the abs, bum and torso you’ve always wished for. You are in exercise mode.

Three or four days into the new regime of hitting it hard every day of the week and you awake feeling like a 70yr old. It hurts to laugh, the trip to the toilet early morning is in slow motion and feels like every muscle is ripping. Am I injured? Have I pulled a muscle? Will I have to stop training? ‘NO to all of the above’. Welcome to the world of Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS).

DOMS is the pain and stiffness felt in muscles several hours to days after unaccustomed or strenuous exercise. The soreness is felt most strongly 24 to 72 hours after the exercise. Research suggests it is caused by eccentric(lengthening) exercise, which means your muscles lengthening under force, which causes microtrauma to the muscle fibers. After such exercise, the muscle adapts rapidly to prevent muscle damage, and thereby soreness, if the exercise is repeated.

Exercise often can induce various degrees of fatigue in the musculoskeletal, nervous, and metabolic systems. Various amounts of discomfort or pain and inflammation can be associated with exercise, depending on the frequency, intensity, duration, and type of exercise performed. After intense exercise or the beginning of a new exercise program, this discomfort and pain commonly are associated with disruption of the intracellular muscle structure, sarcolemma, and extracellular matrix, which leads to prolonged impairment of muscle function roughly around 3-7 days depending on the sex, age and training ability of the person.