The Medical Minute: Exercise gain without pain. Well, maybe some soreness.

Did the simple act of clicking on this week’s Medical Minute make your arm ache?

Maybe you overdid it at the gym. Almost half of the adult U.S. population engages regularly in some sort of fitness activity, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even if you aren’t among them, chances are you’ve at least once in your life experienced muscles sore enough to make tying your shoes or brushing your teeth an achy proposition. It’s enough to cause you to shoot a dirty look at anyone with the gall to offer sage advice like, “no pain, no gain.”

As it turns out, you can have gain without pain. Or at least not enough pain to ruin your day.

Breianna Hummer-Bair, a clinical exercise physiologist at Penn State College of Medicine, says some soreness in exercise is to be expected – particularly when trying something new. Here, she talks about how much pain is too much and what you can do to reduce any aches at all.

A quick note at the outset: Before you start any exercise program, talk to your doctor to make sure it’s safe. “It wouldn’t be a bad thing to start with a physical from your doctor to make sure you’re heart healthy and you don’t have any major medical issues,” she said.

Likewise, for any pain that worries you, don’t hesitate to stop working out and talk with your physician.

Why do my muscles get sore after I work out – particularly early on, when I’m just getting started?

Whenever you start resistance training, running or any kind of physical activity, you engage muscles in a new way. “You’re actually tearing the muscle fibers apart,” Hummer-Bair said. “When we give ourselves time to rest and recover, our body rebuilds those muscle fibers and rebuilds them stronger.”

So, you’re always going to hurt after exercise to make gains, right?

“Definitely not,” Hummer-Bair said.

You’ll feel more of the soreness when you first start exercising, she said, because you’ll do more damage when you aren’t used to an activity. Also, if you have an extremely heavy work out, you’ll notice it. Say you typically move at a steady clip on an elliptical machine, and the next day you go outside and run three miles at eight minutes per mile. You’ll feel it.

Once you get rolling, however, those early aches and pains go away. Unless you’ve overdone it, or, worse, injured yourself.

Doesn’t that mean some muscle soreness is a good thing?

“Good is a relative,” Hummer-Bair said.

Some muscle pain is probably inevitable. “But it can also be a Catch-22 for some people,” she said. “If they have too much muscle pain, it’s going to be a deterrent for them. They’re going to feel like they can’t go back. They can’t function.”

Whether your muscle soreness is just a natural sign that you’re on the right track depends on what you can tolerate, she said. If your pain is so bad you have trouble living your life, stop. It’s too much.

How do you know what’s too much?

Pay attention to the soreness. For example, some people feel some pain and swelling after a workout, Hummer-Bair said. That’s likely just a buildup of fluid during or immediately after working out, and it usually subsides quickly.

If the pain starts a few days after exercise, it’s called Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. You start to feel that within 24 to 48 hours of your workout, and that’s the pain from tearing the muscle fibers. It can last a few days, depending on the intensity of what you’re doing and which muscle groups you used. Soreness in your legs might go away quickly, because you use your legs frequently. Soreness in a muscle group you don’t use as frequently can linger for several days.

“There’s a difference between pain and soreness,” Hummer-Bair said. If you’re sore and a little uncomfortable, pushing yourself through that soreness is probably OK.

But intolerable, lingering pain indicates a problem. You might have hurt yourself, Hummer-Bair said.

The bottom line is, “if you’re too sore to continue, you need to give yourself some rest,” she said.

How can I head off the pain and still see results?

Moderate your exercise. For example, say you’re doing biceps curls. You should aim for curling a weight where you can do eight to 10 repetitions of the exercise comfortably. You should be feeling tired after that. If you can do 15 repetitions, you’re probably lifting a weight that’s too light. Fewer repetitions and a heavier weight will likely make you feel sore.

Three sets of eight to 10 repetitions for that exercise is optimal, Hummer-Bair said. If you push for more, you might hurt yourself.

You shouldn’t keep going if you feel like you’re going to tear something. Hummer-Bair suggests modifying the exercise. Use less weight. Go to your knees to do more push-ups. “You can still get the benefit, and you’re better off that way,” she said.

What kinds of injuries could I sustain?

Possibilities include muscle tears, muscle strains, joint injuries like knee injuries. “Shoulder and knee injuries are two of the most common,” she said.

What else can I do to prevent soreness and injury?

“Stretching is the best thing,” Hummer-Bair said. She recommends stretching before you exercise and after.

Before you exercise, she recommends dynamic stretching – stretching that requires movement – and warm-up exercises. “It’s important especially if you’re new to exercise,” she said.

After exercise, performing static stretches like standing and reaching down to touch your toes can help reduce muscle pain.

Related content:

• The Medical Minute: How to get started with physical fitness
• The Medical Minute: 75 Hard, 75 Soft and how to keep your fitness resolutions

The Medical Minute is a weekly health news feature produced by Penn State Health. Articles feature the expertise of faculty, physicians and staff, and are designed to offer timely, relevant health information of interest to a broad audience.

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