The five best ways to recover from muscle soreness

…or can massage help you to beat DOMS?

Whether you’ve just started out on your exercise journey, had a busy day gardening or are training as an elite athlete, you will have had those days when your mind says yes, but your body says hang on a minute, I’m not sure I can move like that, it feels like someone’s taken my legs away/beat my shoulders up/wiped my memory of how to move.

No doubt this will have happened a day or two after a heavy training session or after starting a new exercise and this is DOMS: delayed onset muscle soreness. This is caused by damage to your muscle fibres (which has to happen to a certain extent to make you stronger) and a breakdown of neural connections but nobody knows exactly how or why.

It could be a self-preservation mechanism to stop us doing further (too much) damage to our muscles so that they can recover quicker and have us back on our feet and back to the daily routine faster.

And so to the question - can massage help?

There is some evidence from the University of Poitiers in France that compared with some other treatments (including cryotherapy, compression, active recovery and stretching) massage had a positive effect judged on DOMS as well as perceived fatigue.

Good news! Book a massage now!

But it’s not that simple… Massage is a complex thing to judge because the physical effect can be affected by psychological factors - what you expect to happen, prior experience and even stress levels and studies tend to have small sample studies and be biased towards positive outcomes.

So how do you work out if you should get in touch with a massage therapist nearby, or if you should put your feet up and wait for your aches and pains to resolve? My recommendation is to get to know your body and work out what is best for you.

If you’ve never had a deep tissue massage to help your recovery give it a go with an open mind. Explain to your therapist what you’ve been doing and when you did your last training session/mega session in the garden and also what you have coming up. Treatment will be tailored to you so you get the best results.

Massage is not the only way to recover - try stretching, foam rolling or active recovery, as well as massage and find out what works for you.

Let me know how you get on.

Feel free to contact me to find out how massage can help you in your training and for advice about choosing a massage therapist.