Is Soreness Necessary for Growth?

Bigger Stronger Leaner Competitive Bodybuilding
1

Is muscle soreness necessary for growth?

I say yes. Absolutely, indisputably, necessarily so.

Muscle soreness is an indication of breakdown. Without having been broken down, the stimulus for growth simply does not exist.

I see no alternative explanation to this which conforms to basic physiology.

I am a personal trainer and I tell my clients that DOMS is a fantastic way to judge the effectiveness of workouts.

I would like to know if anyone disagrees with me and if they can produce a credible, opposing argument.

Let’s get it on.

2

I know I’ve had some stellar workouts that left me with barely even the tiniest bit of soreness. Other days I’ve barely done anything and felt roughed up for two days. I doubt DOMS is a reliable indicator of a solid workout.

3

But what’s a “stellar workout” to you? It sounds as if you’re judging the workout by the things you got accomplished. From this, I infer that you’re an athlete who trains for performance instead of hypertrophy.

I do not believe that soreness is necessary to improve performance, but that’s a different world.

ironmagazine.com/article118.html

4

I’ve always thought that way, it seems like common sense.

5

I’m Googling this topic and every single purported “refutation” of this claim I’ve thus far come across strikes me as utter bull.

For example:

http://www.averagewhitedude.com/does-soreness-equal-muscle-growth/225/

“#1) Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (D.O.M.S.) Is Widely Mis-Understood”

It isn’t misunderstood at all. You don’t need to be scientist with a microscope. You just need to be an idiot who lifts weights on a regular basis. Whether the cause is lactic acid or microtrauma is largely irrelevant in the bigger picture. The ancient Greeks didn’t have microscopes and they still understood DOMs.

  1. [quote]#2) Soreness Does Not Necessarily Indicate Muscle Growth

Some guys believe that “being sore” means they�??ve done something right and therefore, their muscles will grow larger.

That�??s only partially true. Soreness is basically an indicator that you�??ve done something DIFFERENT. [/quote]

This guy doesn’t bother to explain the physiological mechanism behind muscle growth, despite claiming that it soreness doesn’t trigger it. And “training different” refers to progressive overload and variation, which are two key principles in triggering growth. So he presents a very poor argument.

“Progression. If you are adding reps or increasing the weights used on a consistent basis, then you KNOW you are growing.”

BULLSHIT. A fundamental misunderstanding. If you are adding reps and increasing weights on a consistent basis, the ONLY thing that tells you for sure is that you are adding reps and increasing weights on a consistent basis. More weight and reps does NOT equal growth. GROWTH equals growth. When you are seeing growth on a consistent basis, that’s when you know you are growing, lol

All of these “refutations” deal with nebulous topics like overtraining. Overtraining doesn’t even exist as a tangible concept. There is no diagnostic in existence which can accurately determine whether a person is “overtrained” and distinguish that condition from some other illness. If a guy has AIDS and is about to die in two weeks, you don’t say he is “overtrained”. You call it for what it is. Yet the effect is the same. Overtraining is a meaningless, redundant term with no practical application. It exemplifies the fine art of pseudo-scientific bullshiting.

6

Muscles grow by adaptating to new efforts and stimulus. That’s why you need to change routines often, otherwise your muscles get used to the work and instinctively stop growing, simply because your body supposes that your current muscles are sufficiently big and strong.

For that reason, in my humble opinion, DOMS do not lead directly to growth. BUT muscle soreness is most of the time associated with changing programs (increasing volume, intensity, switching exercices) which does create more muscle.

Personnally, I don’t focus on DOMS too much, but instead make sure I never stay on a program for more than 6 weeks, and always play with volume and intensity to make sure I shock muscles into growing.

7

You will build a pain tolerance eventually, the muscles will still break down you just wont feel it as much. Eventually you will get used to it and if you train with enough volume will adapt to it and not get as much doms.

Anyways you can get sore all you want and if your not EATING you will not grow just get stronger.

8

I also agree with this.

“Progression. If you are adding reps or increasing the weights used on a consistent basis, then you KNOW you are growing.”

Assuming same nutrition and supplementation over the 2 months of this example
Say your absolute 5RM on barbell curls (lol) is 60 pounds. If 2 months later it went up to 100 pounds, you OBVIOUSLY have built muscle. Strenght doesn’t come from nowhere.

You are focusing too much on the size aspect, muscles don’t grow magically by lifting weights, you need to force your nervous system into thinking that you NEED more muscles. And for that, you need to keep your muscles guessing.

You want to fatiguate muscles, not obliterate them.

9

[quote]Kataklysm wrote:
I also agree with this.

“Progression. If you are adding reps or increasing the weights used on a consistent basis, then you KNOW you are growing.”

Assuming same nutrition and supplementation over the 2 months of this example
Say your absolute 5RM on barbell curls (lol) is 60 pounds. If 2 months later it went up to 100 pounds, you OBVIOUSLY have built muscle. Strenght doesn’t come from nowhere.

You are focusing too much on the size aspect, muscles don’t grow magically by lifting weights, you need to force your nervous system into thinking that you NEED more muscles. And for that, you need to keep your muscles guessing.

You want to fatiguate muscles, not obliterate them.[/quote]

Um no you can have a more effective central nervous system, look at some of the top olympic lifters or powerlifter/strongman they are nowhere near as huge as bodybuilders yet they are much stronger then them. Strong muscles are not always HUGE muscles.

10

So nominal prospect, if you are training for for hypertrophy on say a 8 week program, and for maybe the first 2 weeks you are sore after the workouts. After those two weeks you are no longer sore for the rest of the program, does that mean the following 6 weeks of that program could not induce hypertrophy?

Now, I know you didn’t indicate what I just said is true, but all you said was DOMS is a true indicator or the potential for growth, which I agree with, it’s just not the only one.

11

I agree, but the CNS isn’t responsible for everything, lifting more IMPLIES that you develop your muscularity. A powerlifter isn’t built the same way as a BBer. It’s not only about actual size, muscle development is beyond your measurement with a tape…

12

Neural improvements are responsible for the bulk of strength gains at a given weight. “Neural” is just a fancy word for improving your technique, your motor patterns in a particular movement through repetition. You can get “stronger” (i.e. better) at absolutely anything simply by practicing it often.

I believe that contractile fiber hypertrophy is not responsible for the bulk of strength increases. Rather, overall hypertrophy is what counts, and by this I am talking about any size gains, even those coming purely from body fat. In the strength world, nothing beats leverage as the primary determinant of lifting ability. It’s physics. Anything that increases leverage, increases strength. Body fat does this.

People think their “muscles” are growing when they go up in weight and get stronger, but in reality, there is absolutely no guarantee that any contractile fiber hypertrophy has occured as a result of a strength increase.

Any person will be stronger at 15% BF than 9% BF, with no muscle gained in the process.

The only way to target muscular hypertrophy is by training to soreness with isolation movements. However, this also brings about sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, i.e. “fluid” or “the pumped look” which bodybuilders typify.

[quote]shizen wrote:
You will build a pain tolerance eventually, the muscles will still break down you just wont feel it as much. Eventually you will get used to it and if you train with enough volume will adapt to it and not get as much doms.

Anyways you can get sore all you want and if your not EATING you will not grow just get stronger. [/quote]

I agree about the diet part but I think that a person would put on as much muscle as their body could sustain at a given body weight. You see this effect with prisoners, boxers and others who maintain a set weight or consistent caloric intake.

I have been training for a long time and I’ve seen marked changes in my soreness levels. You’re right, it’s hard to get sore when you’ve been at it for a while. However, I can still get there if I push myself extremely hard. And no matter how hard I go, it seems to be gone within a day or two now, whereas in the past, it could easily last a week.

You have to train like a superhero in order to be sore after every workout. Beginners have it easy. And beginners see the most growth. Coincidence? I think not.

13

[quote]PF_88 wrote:
So nominal prospect, if you are training for for hypertrophy on say a 8 week program, and for maybe the first 2 weeks you are sore after the workouts. After those two weeks you are no longer sore for the rest of the program, does that mean the following 6 weeks of that program could not induce hypertrophy?

Now, I know you didn’t indicate what I just said is true, but all you said was DOMS is a true indicator or the potential for growth, which I agree with, it’s just not the only one.[/quote]

For one thing, I don’t believe in “programs”.

Programs are for athletes. They develop sport-specific skills.

Bodybuilders don’t train skills. They train muscles. There is an endless amount of variation that can be employed using the basic parameters of load, volume, intensity, frequency, not to mention exercise-specific variables like grip, stance, ROM, etc…

The only things I recognize are routines.

And to be perfectly honest, I would have to answer your question in the affirmative. No more soreness equals no more growth. I really think it’s that straight forward. I think that’s the reason why the rate of gains slows down for experienced trainees.

14

You lost me after the quote. Don’t you think that when you have to “train like a superhero in order to be sore after every workout” it’s time to CHANGE workouts? Or routines however you call it.

Take a random guy, clone him, have both of the subjects follow the same diet and I’ll bet the one who changes routines every other month will grow faster and have more complete development than the one who just follows the same routine and always pushes it farther every other week.

I know a couple of guys at my gym (yeah this is BS evidence I know, just an example off the top of my head)that just won’t change routines and have been doing the same stuff for months (or years) and now they’re left with no progression at all, despite good nutrition plus some injuries because instead of twitching their approach, they just go harder. It’s like someone who bangs it’s head against the wall to break through instead of taking the door.

I agree with everything you’ve been saying and I’m amazed by your examples and knowledge, but I can’t understand your zeal for DOMS.

15

I believe in never doing the same workout twice.

Change is important, yes.

But little changes. Not the big changes that most people think about.

I’m not a fan of changing exercises. I like to find what works best for each body part and hammer the hell out of them. I’ll experiment with everything else though. Load, reps, volume, grip variations, ROM.

Trust me, that’s more than enough change to stimulate growth.

I’m a glutton for punishment, but only the “right kind” of punishment. I hate “bad soreness”. I hate joint pain and connective tissue soreness. I avoid them at all costs. I want to completely annihilate my muscles but spare the joints entirely. To do this, I have developed extremely precise methods of training. The majority involving machines. You simply can’t train at a high intensity with free weights without beating yourself up. Machines, you can - if you are extremely careful.

Even though I train on machines with 100% isolation as my goal, there is never a single moment where I am not aware of every part of my body.

That’s the irony. “Isolation training” actually develops muscle control throughout the entire body. Compound or “functional” training does the exact opposite. It teaches you to throw your entire body into every lift without thinking. Humans are “compound lifters” by their default neural programming. Thus, isolation lifting represents a more advantaged stage of training, a higher state of neural awareness.

16

Yeah but when you are advanced and not getting as sore, if you take a week or two off and start up again you WILL get sore. Does this mean your all of a sudden building more muscle?
No just means you are resensitized to the pain.

Of course once your at it for years like 10 or more you might eventually hit your natural limit, and to make gains you will have to become extremely precise with diet and it will still be very slow.

17

I agree with Nominal as far as "DOMS is a fantastic way to judge the effectiveness of workouts. "
But what the ‘effectiveness’ pertains to is adaptable. DOMs means you have successfully and effectively made your body adapt to something, but whether the gains are in endurance, hypertrophy, strength, or speed, you cannot judge purely by having got DOMs.

So those of you who are saying ‘DOMs = growth’, you are being too simplistic, and the original statement of ‘DOMs = effectiveness’ is more applicable.

18

Okay. Well you seem to have found an approach that works perfect for you, I’m not gonna argue more. You still won’t find me doing 4 sets of 12 at the preacher curl machine but if you have a system that gives you results, who am I to question it.

My opinion is still that when you come up with a system, you’re not helping gains at all.

19

[quote]Nominal Prospect wrote:
Is muscle soreness necessary for growth?

I say yes. Absolutely, indisputably, necessarily so.

Muscle soreness is an indication of breakdown. Without having been broken down, the stimulus for growth simply does not exist.

I see no alternative explanation to this which conforms to basic physiology.

I am a personal trainer and I tell my clients that DOMS is a fantastic way to judge the effectiveness of workouts.

I would like to know if anyone disagrees with me and if they can produce a credible, opposing argument.

Let’s get it on.

breakdown of muscle fibers doesnt always equate to soreness. however i do agree with the notion that soreness is definitely a good indicator of what is happening to your muscles. a lot of nerds will come out and say noooo you dont have to be sore to get big, but if you’ve been lifting for long enough,

you know that soreness is tellin ya that when you’re not sore anymore and your muscles are done repairing, you’re gonna come back and push the volume up. i wouldn’t deliberately train to get sore, but it will happen when you hit those muscles justttt right

20

[quote]Nominal Prospect wrote:
Neural improvements are responsible for the bulk of strength gains at a given weight. “Neural” is just a fancy word for improving your technique, your motor patterns in a particular movement through repetition. You can get “stronger” (i.e. better) at absolutely anything simply by practicing it often.

I believe that contractile fiber hypertrophy is not responsible for the bulk of strength increases. Rather, overall hypertrophy is what counts, and by this I am talking about any size gains, even those coming purely from body fat. In the strength world, nothing beats leverage as the primary determinant of lifting ability. It’s physics. Anything that increases leverage, increases strength. Body fat does this.

People think their “muscles” are growing when they go up in weight and get stronger, but in reality, there is absolutely no guarantee that any contractile fiber hypertrophy has occured as a result of a strength increase.

Any person will be stronger at 15% BF than 9% BF, with no muscle gained in the process.

The only way to target muscular hypertrophy is by training to soreness with isolation movements. However, this also brings about sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, i.e. “fluid” or “the pumped look” which bodybuilders typify.

shizen wrote:
You will build a pain tolerance eventually, the muscles will still break down you just wont feel it as much. Eventually you will get used to it and if you train with enough volume will adapt to it and not get as much doms.

Anyways you can get sore all you want and if your not EATING you will not grow just get stronger.

I agree about the diet part but I think that a person would put on as much muscle as their body could sustain at a given body weight. You see this effect with prisoners, boxers and others who maintain a set weight or consistent caloric intake.

I have been training for a long time and I’ve seen marked changes in my soreness levels. You’re right, it’s hard to get sore when you’ve been at it for a while. However, I can still get there if I push myself extremely hard. And no matter how hard I go, it seems to be gone within a day or two now, whereas in the past, it could easily last a week.

You have to train like a superhero in order to be sore after every workout. Beginners have it easy. And beginners see the most growth. Coincidence? I think not.[/quote]

this stuff reminds me of TC’s article “Things You Can’t Prove” or something along those lines. there’s no SOLID scientific evidence for this, but i know this to be true.