Do You Have To Be Sore To Build Muscle?

Soreness is the buildup of waste products in your muscle tissue and this soreness can occur for many reasons. Perhaps you are not recovering effectively, not getting enough sleep or having a lack of proper nutrition. The longer and more frequently you train, the more efficient your body becomes at removing the waste products, hence it is normal for you to train harder and with more intensity but get less sore as time progresses.

Muscle growth occurs when muscles are perturbed to change and have to adapt to new training stimulus, commonly referred to as progressive overload. Essentially, this means lifting more weight and doing more volume over time. Soreness does not indicate the level of progressive overload for your muscles. Excessive soreness either occur in beginners or when you change up your routine, both means the same thing: new but not necessarily a more effective stimulus. For example, if you want to make your calves sore, you can jump up and down for an hour and the next day your calves will be sore! However, you are not going to grow, you have to expose your body to change. In fact, endurance athletes (runners) accumulate more metabolic waste than strength athletes (football athletes, powerlifters).

Soreness is manageable and there are things that you can do right now to reduce the level of soreness you get on a regular basis such as making sure you are consuming proper anti-inflammatories (fish oil, curcumin), sleeping effectively (minimum 7hrs per night), eating vegetables & essential micronutrients and making sure you are foam rolling & stretching both pre and post workout. If you do these things, your DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) will be greatly reduced. Most people will chase after fatigue because they don’t feel like they worked out ‘hard’ unless they are sore the next day but remember, soreness and training effectively are not related at all. Think of the example used about jumping. Low to moderate levels of soreness are to be expected from training but if you are excessively sore on a regular basis, it either indicates poor training and/or poor recovery.

Focus on getting better in the gym, lifting more weight for more reps and you will see progress eventually. Soreness on the other hand is just a buildup of waste product.