Jessica Bowser Nelson Fitness

Don’t Let Sore Muscles Slow You Down!

I know you’ve been there where the alarm goes off, you reach over to turn it off and BAMMMM, sore muscles stop you dead in your tracks. You want to roll over and cry like a baby, but, somehow, you have to get up and go to work. Commence a classic mental image of you wincing, crawling, limping and moaning til you get your bearings. You always suffer from sore muscles the most in the morning, because you have not been moving while you were asleep. You have stiffened up. The key is to work thru the soreness.

I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get up!

So you feel like the tin man, right? It hurts to move, so your natural reaction is to….stay still. NO! Want to know how to treat sore muscles? You need to move, stretch, do yoga, use a foam roller, exercise, walk, run, drink tons of water. THIS is the only way to help your sore muscles improve. You have to move! The more you move, the less sore you will feel. I have people tell me all the time…”I couldn’t work out today. I’m too sore.” Odds are, they are still too sore the next day, as well! Movement is what you need! The first time I did P90X, for the first month, I skipped the Yoga X DVD (day 4 of every week). I had never done yoga, but considered it to be boring, easy and simply a time filler for the program. I didn’t have time for that! Plus, I liked a challenge! I liked pushing myself not doing some mamsy pamsy yoga. Well, after about 30 days of P90X, I was a rigid, stiff board. The soreness had overtaken my entire body. I didn’t stop. I kept going, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to go on like that forever. I did the yoga. I didn’t want to. I wasn’t sure why I was doing it. But, I wanted to maximize my results and follow the program and maybe, just maybe there was a reason for the yoga. OH MY WOW! First, it was TOUGH! It WAS a challenge! I definitely wasn’t expecting that! Second, man my sore muscles started feeling better. Third, my muscles started LOOKING better! What? Sure enough! I knew then that I had been short changing myself and my body. Moral of the story: Stretch. Do yoga. Do SOMETHING!

Confession: I love sore muscles!

It’s true. I feel like most people fall into one of two categories: you love em or you hate em. I love them. I get a sense of accomplishment and feel like I am really working when I am sore. I know this isn’t necessarily the case and that some people genetically are predisposed to being more sore than others, but it doesn’t change the fact that I love it! But, if I don’t stretch and work out the sore muscles, I will end up with a migraine due to the tension in my shoulders and I won’t perform as well, either. I used to be an avid “skipper of the stretch”, but not anymore. I still hate the stretch DVD (one is incorporated into every Beachbody program) and think of all the other productive things that I could be doing during that time, but I am also smart enough to know that stretching leads to long life and mobility and really IS a productive use of my time. I just like to cry about it 🙂 So, I’m off to do my stretch DVD and hopes this finds you sore but limber. DON’T SKIP THE STRETCH!

P.S. It is tough to convince myself to exercise with sore muscles sometimes, so I will use Energy and Endurance to get me going on those days!