Starting

The Training Station regularly signs-up people who join to start exercising for the first time, or to resume exercising after a very long hiatus. I tell them to aim for 10 minutes of aerobic exercise on any machine.

Then I tell them to go home.

It’s difficult to predict a person’s response to exercise. What’s expected are things like a lower blood pressure and a lower weight. But muscle strain and soreness could also occur. An untrained person is more susceptible to injury than a more experienced exerciser. To reduce the risk, the new exerciser should do a bare minimum of exercise – 10 minutes of aerobic exercise – for the first week or two. If something goes wrong, it will be minimally so. After this “break-in” period, increasingly longer workouts may be done.

In addition to the 10-minute aerobic workout, the new exerciser should create the stretching routines that they will do before and after workouts.

In the beginning, 10 minutes and stretching is enough.

Ibuprofen is Your Friend

There are people who want to feel sore. When they wake up the day after the workout, they want to ache and hurt. The pain confirms for them that they really put in hard work.

I’m no fan of muscle soreness. I try to rid my body of it, as soon as possible. I don’t understand those who need hurt after exercising.

For those who think like me, what follows are the most reliable pain-relieving methods that I have used.

Remember that ibuprofen is your friend. Whether Motrin or Advil, this drug takes the sharp edge off of acute muscle soreness. Don’t take if you’re allergic to ibuprofen.

Repeat within 48 hours the same workout that caused the pain. Doing so will pump blood back into the sore muscle tissues. The blood carries the bodily chemicals that ultimately heal the damaged muscles and ease the pain. That notwithstanding, there are workouts that are just too intense to repeat within 48 hours.

Take hot or cold showers. A nice way to temporarily ease muscle soreness is to put hot or cold water on the skin. That’s why athletes submerge their body parts in ice water, and why hot baths feel good. A 15-minute swim has a similar effect.

Stretch. A good stretch will make you more comfortable in your skin. But it will have little affect on muscle soreness. Think of stretching as a method of increasing your comfort, more so than as a method of reducing the pain.

The Training Station offers the best (and only) complete stretching therapy in the Philadelphia area. If you need a good stretch, we’ll be happy to do it!