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RACE SEASON
JOHN AALBERG
Contributing Editor for The Master Skier
John Aalberg is a two-time Olympian, two sport NCAA All-American, five time U.S. National Champion, eight year TUNA Head Coach, Coach of Olympic athletes, National Champions and a bunch of great local athletes and skiers (Reprinted with permission of skifaster.com)
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Contrary to earlier research conclusions, a study at the University of Umeå in Sweden, has shown that you renew and re-build muscles and muscle fibers even though they hurt and are sore after training.
This means you can train the day after a hard session, without worrying about getting injured. Even though you are sore, this does not mean that you have injured the muscles or the connective tissue. Rather the opposite. You have improved.
You can safely train again the day after a hard session, even though you are sore, says anatomy Professor at the University of Umeå, Lars-Eric Thornell.
Getting sore, building muscles
Mr. Thornell and his assistants analyzed the muscles of 40 students that all performed hard training sessions causing muscle soreness.
Muscle soreness does not increase the risk of damaging the muscle fibers. Neither does it increase the risk of other types of injuries.
- Build-up phase
The soreness proves only that you are in a build-up phase, and it is therefore not harmful to train. But, you don’t have to train. You don’t get any better results training with soreness, than training without, says Thornell.
Thornell did a similar study in 1983. Just as in this new study, he also then showed that the muscle fibers were altered after hard training sessions.
At that time we thought this was a sign of damaged fibers.
The methods we have available today show that this is not the case.
Now we found that the protein (the building block of the muscle) has increased, and that the changes were for the better.
We also found that the soreness is not in the muscle itself, but in the connective tissue, says Thornell.
Soreness a positive thing
Thornell now thinks these results should contribute to people looking more positively at muscle soreness from training.
To feel muscle soreness after a training session means we have exercised a muscle we seldom use.
The pain and soreness is therefore positive.
It means we have improved the muscle, says Thornell, who still thinks the best advice is to train in a consistent and regular manner.
Even though we have found that we build stronger muscles even though we hurt and are sore, this does not mean that we can train irregularly and expect great results.
The best method is still to exercise at least three times per week, says Thornell.
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