Muscle soreness is caused by tiny tears in your muscle tissues. It might sound bad but it isn’t really that bad a thing, especially if the soreness was a result of exercises the day before or two days before.

The tears in the muscle tissues are caused by overworking your muscles. It may be caused by a whole range of exercises. From short distance sprinting to running a marathon. From lifting heavy weights or simple aerobics. As long as the muscles were “overloaded”, aches will occur.

Usually in weight training, many newbies are deterred from following up with their first few sessions because they feel a immobilizing soreness all over their body. Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness a.k.a DOMS causes muscles to be extremely sore on the second day prior to day of exercise. Many are discouraged from going to the gym again.Others call that over training and significantly reduce the their load and intensity.

The principle of overloading states that you need a greater than normal stress on your body for training adaptation to take place". This greater than normal stress causes the muscles to work harder than they normally do and thus they are "overloaded". So, no pain no gain? Not really. You should only be experiencing the severe aches for about a week or so. After that overloading period, your body should be starting to adapt to your increased workload (Assuming you have been following the same exercise routine and carrying the same weights).

The aches will seemed to feel less and less severe. That is when your muscle have adapted very well to what you're doing. To put it simply, you're now stronger if you were lifting weights, you've got more stamina now if you were struggling to finish a 2km run.

So what now, after you've gotten past the "i can't move, help me get out of bed, i exercised too much yesterday." phase and you're now at the "this is a walk in the park." phase?

Go back to the initial phase. Overload yourself again. Lift heavier weights but maintain the same kind of exercises so you can better gauge your improvement. Run 1km more. Run a minute faster.

You have to be caught in a cycle to constantly improve physically. In the many cycles of our lives, this is one of the very few that isn't vicious....

by Kaden Hoe