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| The DOMS Fairy. He's as happy as he makes you.... |
Anyone who has participated in resistance training or some
form of semi-vigorous exercise has surely experienced a visit from the DOMS
Fairy at one time or another. DOMS stands
for Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, a condition which peaks between 24 and 48
hours following a bout of exercise (Connolly, Sayers, and McHugh, 2003; Smith,
1992). It can be generally characterized as a feeling of combined soreness and
stiffness within the muscles directly targeted during a recent training
session. You know what I’m talking about. That phenomenon that has you glued to
the toilet seat a day or two after an intense lower body training session.
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| Help! I've sat down and I can't get up! |
Not only is DOMS a pain to deal with (pun intended) both in
the figurative and literal sense, but it also has the capacity to be a
decrement to athletic performance (Connolly et al., 2003; Wilmore, Costill and Kenney, 2008) and training productivity. While
the concept of DOMS is not foreign to those familiar to the training game, nor
to the vast majority of the lay public, the causation of the condition
represents an entirely different story.
Ask anyone in the gym or on the practice field to ID the
culprit behind their muscle soreness, and you’re likely to hear a reference to lactic
acid mentioned somewhere in the answer. Lactic
acid has been getting a bad rap on this front for as long as I can remember now,
but undeservedly so. The confusion may
come from the production of lactic acid during activities which rely heavily on
the fast glycolytic system for energy (Adenosine Triphosphate or ATP)
production. Fast glycolysis is the primary energy producer for training modalities
such as weight training, plyometrics, sprinting and agility drills (short
duration / high intensity endeavors).
Not surprisingly, these are the same types of activities that tend to
induce the most prominent bouts with DOMS.
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Glycolysis refers to the breakdown of carbohydrate for energy
(ATP) production within the body; two primary systems exist, fast (energy
production required at a high rate, insufficient oxygen, pyruvate converted to
lactic acid) and slow (energy production required at a slower rate, sufficient
oxygen, pyruvate utilized within the oxidative system).
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It’s also worth mentioning that for a time, a theory did
exist linking lactic acid to the occurrence of DOMS. However, more recent research has largely minimized
the likelihood of this theory, showing that blood lactate concentrations (for
simplicity’s sake think of this as lactic acid) typically return to
pre-exercise levels within an hour of training (Baechle and Earle, 2008). Additionally, researchers have also documented
instances where exercises promoting high levels of blood lactate produced
minimal DOMS, while others promoting low levels of blood lactate incited the occurrence
of the condition (Dierking and Bemben, 1998; Wilmore et al., 2008). Now that we’ve nailed down the origin of the
confusion, provided you with a crash course in bioenergetics and cleared lactic
acid’s good name, let’s look at the real story with DOMS.
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| Cool picture to break up the science monotony |
To begin, it may prove helpful to think of DOMS as exercise-induced
muscle damage. This damage is caused
particularly by way of unfamiliar exercises or those requiring the use of
eccentric muscular contraction (contraction of a muscle while it lengthens). Weight training, sprinting, plyometrics and
agility work all require the use of eccentric muscular contraction to a
relatively high degree as compared to the likes of distance running. Hence the high incidence of DOMS associated
with these activities. Structural Damage
to the muscle prompts the arrival of all the same culprits one would expect in
any instance of bodily injury; namely swelling and inflammation. While not
completely understood, it is believed that the inflammation process, prompted
by the structural damage, promotes the synthesis of various chemical
substances which in turn cause pain via the stimulation of afferent nerve
endings (Connolly et al., 2003).
Unfortunately there remains no real means for the complete avoidance
of DOMS. Its severity may be attenuated
by avoiding unfamiliar exercise, limiting eccentric contractions or by
utilizing a warm-up as a means of decreasing viscosity within a given muscle
group before training (Szymanski, 2001), but that just about does it. In the end, DOMS is something that is simply a
part of the training game for the foreseeable future. My best
advice, learn to love the good hurt.
References:
Baechle, T. R. and Earle, R. W. (2008). Essentials of Strength and Conditioning.
Champaign IL: Human Kinetics.
Connolly, D. A. J., Sayers, S. P., and McHugh, M. P.
(2003). Treatment and prevention of
delayed onset muscle soreness. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research,
17(1), 197-208.
Dierking, J. K. and Bemben, M. G. (1998). Delayed onset muscle soreness. Strength and Conditioning, 20(4), 44-48.
Smith, L. L. (1992). Causes of delayed onset muscle soreness
and the impact of athletic performance: a review. Journal of Applied Sports Science Research,
6(3), 135-141.
Szymanski, D. J. (2001).
Recommendations for the avoidance of delayed-onset muscle soreness. Strength and Conditioning Journal, 23(4),
7-13.
Willmore, J. H., Costill, D. L. and Kenney W. L.
(2008). Physiology of Sport and
Exercise. Champaign IL: Human Kinetics.
