The muscle pain we feel is the muscle healing and rebuilding!
We all have felt the soreness after a hard workout or after not being active for a long time and doing physical exercise.
There are 2 phases to this muscle soreness:
1.In the first phase:
Glucose transforms in lack of oxygen into energy , lactic acid ,and hydrogen ions (byproducts) which lower the pH.(pH=power of hydrogen ions ;as the pH lowers the power of hydrogen ions grows)
This build up of lactic acid makes us feel the muscle burn for the duration of the exercise and a couple of hours later. The lactic acid is neutralised by the body and transformed to glucose again in the Cori cycle.
The soreness actually comes from negative hydrogen ions which can be neutralised with a proper alkaline diet.
2.In the second phase :
In order for the muscle to grow it must suffer micro tears. These tears are repaired by the body and the fibers become stronger.
There are 2 types of hypertrophy (muscle growth).
Sarcomere hypertrophy which is an increase in the size of the contractile portion of the muscle and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, an increase in the non-contractile portion of the muscle.
- Sarcomere hypertrophy involves a smaller increase in the diameter of the muscle, but muscle density increases.
- Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy shows an increase in muscle diameter and a decrease in density.
- All hypertrophy will involve both processes; the ratio is dependent on training intensity and frequency.
Heavy weight training will help increase the muscle density while light weight training will help you build the volume of the muscle.
Also don’t think you’ll get bigger in no time because it has been studied that you can put only 3.6 kg of pure muscle tissue per year naturally, the rest is water and fat which makes you look bigger.
- In order to help the muscle recover you should eat more protein to help build those new muscles .
- Remember: MUSCLES GROW AT REST ,NOT AT WORK. The healing process takes places mostly when resting.
The soreness is the worst 48-72 hours after training either from metabolic wastes or soreness of the tendons.There are more theories but scientists are not certain yet about the cause. This type of pain bears the name of delayed onset muscle soreness
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