Fitness coach Eric Roberts explains that muscle soreness isn't a reliable sign of a good workout. Soreness lasting three or more days signals overtraining and poor recovery. Instead, measure progress by reps, weight, and form, and aim for a 2-7 soreness level on a 10-point scale.
I know you've been there. You're so sore from one of your workouts that it hurts to take a sit down on the toilet, or it's an entire event trying to get yourself up the stairs. Or when you're washing your hair in the shower, you can just feel your muscles screaming at you. The only thing is, is that actually a good thing? The goal of this video is to clearly and concisely lay out how sore you should be after your workouts in order to make sure you are seeing the most progress humanly possible. If you don't know me, my name is Eric Roberts. I've been a coach for over the past 7 years now helping people get in shape, get healthier, get stronger, lose fat, build muscle, all the cool things. I'm not here to BS you, and I'm not here to tell you you can lose 50 pounds in a month by only eating celery and drinking your tears. With that being said, let's dive into the video. I think the first thing we should talk about when it comes to muscle soreness is what causes muscle soreness. Muscle soreness is caused by muscle damage. When you work out, you create this muscle damage by creating little micro tears inside of your muscle fibers. when you're doing your exercise. So the next time you're doing a bicep curl, you're literally tearing your muscle fiber apart. It's kind of crazy to think about, I know, but it's actually how your body kind of rebuilds back up and builds stronger, more defined muscles. When you work out, you create varying levels of muscle damage. For example, when you are a beginner, or when you start a new training program, or even throw in a new exercise that maybe you haven't done before or haven't done in a while, you are going to create a lot more muscle damage Because of the stimulus. It's just new to your body. But the more you do that workout program, or the more just in general that you start working out, because the stimulus is less new and you're starting to get used to it, you create less degrees of muscle damage over time. This is why maybe when you first start a workout program, like the first week you're super sore and the next week you're kind of sore still, but then the third and fourth week maybe you're not that sore. This is actually pretty normal for that reason. The only question is, does that mean the less sore you get that you're going to see less progress? I think to accurately answer that question, we first have to define that too much muscle soreness is actually going to be a negative thing in your journey for seeing progress. This is because if you have too much muscle soreness, it's actually a sign that your body isn't recovering enough in order to change and make the adaptations that you want. And if you watch my previous video after this one, you'll probably understand a bit more that your body can't get stronger and build muscle and make change unless you recover from your workouts. So with that being said, what is too much muscle soreness? If you are sore, like debilitatingly sore in your workouts, 3+ days after you hit that muscle group. So let's say, for example, if you did legs on Monday, if by the time Thursday or Friday rolls around and you are still like you can barely get up off the toilet, you are doing too much in your workouts, which is not going to lead to the progress that you want to see over time. And if this is happening to you, you probably just need to do a little bit less exercises or a little bit less sets in your exercises during your workouts. So we just talked about how much is too much muscle soreness to where you're not going to see progress. So what is the right amount of muscle soreness? Honestly, I want you to think about muscle soreness as a correlation, not a causation. Muscle soreness in and of itself is not a direct indicator of whether or not you are seeing progress and having an effective workout, because what is a direct indicator of if your workouts are going to, you know, have you see progress and if your workouts are effective or not is more measurable items. Things like doing more reps in a specific exercise, lifting more weight for a specific exercise, getting better form or range of motion with a specific exercise. Hell, just making sure you show up to the gym consistently. Those are much more objective and measurable forms of progress. If you are doing those things in your workouts, week to week, month to month, you are going to see progress. And that is the most important thing. Now, soreness may be a correlation of you doing those things. For example, if you add 10 pounds on your hip thrust from last week, your glutes very well might scream at you and be a little bit sore the next day or 2 days after. Or if let's say you were currently doing 5 reps on a shoulder press, and then the next week you did 8 reps on that same shoulder press. Your shoulders might be a little bit sore, but it's a correlation of you increasing the reps that you did. So you're not basing the effectiveness of your workout on if you're sore or not. You're basing the effectiveness of your workout on the other things we mentioned previously. Some soreness in your muscles might just come along for the ride. On a scale of 1 to 10 of muscle soreness, if 1 is like you're not sore at all and 10 is like You can't sit down on the toilet. I would say in your workouts, if you're within that 2 to 7 range of muscle soreness, that is generally speaking where you will probably fall if you are making sure you're adding more weight, adding more reps, getting better form, and so on and so forth. If you're consistently above that 7 on that scale, you're probably doing too much and need to back it off. And I will say If you're never sore at all whatsoever, not even a little bit like, mm, I can kind of feel that, you're probably not lifting heavy enough in your workouts. And if you want to figure out how heavy you should be lifting in your workouts, you can watch this video right here where I explain just that. I hope this video was helpful. Feel free to give it a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, and let me know below what your biggest takeaway was. I look forward to seeing you around a little bit more.
