Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Does Soreness Equal Muscle Growth? (What Science Says) | Ep 372

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Does Soreness Equal Muscle Growth? (What Science Says) | Ep 372 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:02
  Philip Pape: If you're someone who judges your workouts by how sore you are the next day, thinking that pain equals progress, and you've been chasing that muscle burn as proof.
• 0:10
  Philip Pape: You've been getting stronger and building muscle, but you're confused because sometimes you feel like you had an amazing training session, yet wake up feeling perfectly fine.
• 0:19
  Philip Pape: This episode is for you.
• 0:21
  Philip Pape: You'll discover why soreness is actually a terrible indicator of workout quality, the science behind what DOMS really tells us about your training, and the metrics you should be tracking instead to know if you're actually making progress toward your Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency.
• 0:53
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're going to answer a question that came from one of our Wits and Weights Physique University members, one that I get asked constantly in both coaching calls and when I appear on other podcasts, and the exact question she shared was, quote is a workout effective if you're not sore the next day?
• 1:12
  Philip Pape: Conversely, can you sometimes feel DOMS without actually getting stronger?
• 1:17
  Philip Pape: I'm trying to measure progress by increasing weight and reps over time, but you know I'm always looking for more feedback or confirmation that I'm doing enough, without overdoing it.
• 1:26
  Philip Pape: This perfectly captures the confusion around soreness and training effectiveness that I've seen ever since I got into this space, and we're going to break this down systematically.
• 1:36
  Philip Pape: First, I'm going to explain what DOMS actually is and why it happens.
• 1:40
  Philip Pape: Doms stands for Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness.
• 1:43
  Philip Pape: Then we'll explore why soreness is a terrible indicator of workout quality.
• 1:48
  Philip Pape: After that, we're gonna look at what soreness actually does tell you about your training both the good and the concerning signals and then, finally, I'll give you the specific metrics you should track instead to know if your workouts, if your training, is actually working.
• 2:01
  Philip Pape: By the end of this episode, my hope is you'll never again judge a training session by how you feel the next morning.
• 2:08
  Philip Pape: Before we get into the science, I do want to share a testimonial from one of our Physique University members that I think captures the spirit of today's topic Quote.
• 2:17
  Philip Pape: When I asked a question about wanting to get back into a cut in the Facebook group but mentioned that my lifts plateaued, philip opened my eyes.
• 2:24
  Philip Pape: I'm realizing that those diet breaks, carefully tracked, would have been a good move.
• 2:27
  Philip Pape: All these tips are with the mindset of looking far down the road and getting into habits little by little, to where you hardly feel the effort.
• 2:33
  Philip Pape: I signed up for Physique University right away, as I don't want to lose my progress, end quote.
• 2:37
  Philip Pape: Now notice this is a little bit about plateauing and tracking, but notice the big picture here.
• 2:43
  Philip Pape: The member shifted from worrying about immediate feedback, which soreness would fall into that category, to focusing on the long term process and tracking progress and the systematic approach, and that's basically what we're talking about today.
• 2:57
  Philip Pape: All right, what is DOMS?
• 2:58
  Philip Pape: Let's start with the foundation understanding what soreness actually represents at the physiological level, because even that alone can be difficult to wrap your head around unless you understand, okay, what even causes soreness to begin with, before we decide, should we be chasing it?
• 3:13
  Philip Pape: So let's talk about DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness.
• 3:17
  Philip Pape: It kicks in about 12 to 24 hours after exercise so hence the word delayed onset and it peaks around 24 to 72 hours later, so about a half a day to three days later.
• 3:29
  Philip Pape: And you might have noticed certain muscle groups will take longer to feel sore than others, right, like the bigger muscles, like your legs.
• 3:35
  Philip Pape: Now, this is not from lactate acid buildup, despite what you might've heard.
• 3:40
  Philip Pape: Doms comes from microtrauma to muscle fibers, as well as localized inflammation and fluid shifts going on in the tissue.
• 3:50
  Philip Pape: So this is your body's response to the mechanical stress, especially from movements that emphasize the eccentric phase, that is, the lowering portion of a lift.
• 4:02
  Philip Pape: For example, romanian deadlifts, if done right, can actually produce some notorious soreness because of the controlled lowering motion.
• 4:10
  Philip Pape: It is in a sense an isolation movement, even though it's a compound lift.
• 4:14
  Philip Pape: If done right, you really can tear those hamstrings in the eccentric.
• 4:18
  Philip Pape: And again we're going to talk about why that's not always a bad thing.
• 4:21
  Philip Pape: Right, we want to do Romanian deadlifts Same thing with, say, walking lunges or negatives.
• 4:26
  Philip Pape: If you're trying to get better at your chin-ups or pull-ups or bodyweight squats, for example, the muscle lengthens under tension and that creates more microscopic damage than the concentric contractions by themselves.
• 4:39
  Philip Pape: And you're thinking, okay, well, don't you always have an eccentric?
• 4:42
  Philip Pape: You do, so stick with me Now.
• 4:44
  Philip Pape: Soreness itself is an adaptation signal, usually to novel, that's, new or unaccustomed stress.
• 4:53
  Philip Pape: The key word here is novel.
• 4:55
  Philip Pape: Your body is telling you it experienced something different, not necessarily that it's quote unquote optimal for muscle growth or that it's doing anything more than something that doesn't make you sore.
• 5:06
  Philip Pape: So I want to talk about why this distinction between different and optimal is the critical piece.
• 5:12
  Philip Pape: So we're going to get to the heart of our member's question Can you get sore without getting stronger?
• 5:17
  Philip Pape: Absolutely, and can effective workouts leave you without soreness?
• 5:22
  Philip Pape: Also, absolutely so they're independent variables, is my point.
• 5:27
  Philip Pape: One doesn't follow from the other per se.
• 5:29
  Philip Pape: So, for example, you can get incredibly sore from activities that really don't do anything for your strength, muscle, physique goals.
• 5:38
  Philip Pape: You know, I've seen people report soreness after moving from one house to another, doing yard work, taking a long hike, especially if you don't do it often or if you're going uphill and you normally go on flat land.
• 5:50
  Philip Pape: And none of these activities were designed specifically to train and progress over time to build muscle, but they create plenty of DOMS.
• 5:58
  Philip Pape: On the flip side, you can make huge strength and muscle gains with minimal soreness once you're adapted to your training routine, and this is one of the biggest surprises I face all the time.
• 6:09
  Philip Pape: In fact, it creates concern in some people's minds.
• 6:12
  Philip Pape: It's like, oh, I'm not getting sore.
• 6:14
  Philip Pape: What is going on?
• 6:14
  Philip Pape: Is this actually working?
• 6:16
  Philip Pape: And I work with, you know, newbies, late beginner, early intermediate, late intermediate, advanced lifters, all at different levels, who, they'll rarely get sore because their bodies have adapted to the stimulus really quickly, like within a few sessions, is often the case, and we see this even in a single training block, like if I switch from one six week block into a new block with new lifts.
• 6:40
  Philip Pape: I may get a little bit sore after those first couple sessions, or even each of those sessions the first week because it's all new movements I haven't done in a while.
• 6:48
  Philip Pape: And then by the next week it's all good and I don't feel sore anymore, right, and yet you're still increasing and adding weight to the bar, adding reps to your lifts.
• 6:57
  Philip Pape: So let's step back and talk about first principles again.
• 7:02
  Philip Pape: Muscle hypertrophy the growth in muscle size, is driven by mechanical tension, progressive overload and sufficient volume over time.
• 7:10
  Philip Pape: Now mechanical tension is really what it is, because the progressive overload and the volume is just a way to increase that over time as it gets harder and harder to do so unless you increase the challenge on your muscles.
• 7:20
  Philip Pape: Soreness correlates with none of these.
• 7:23
  Philip Pape: That's the revelation here.
• 7:27
  Philip Pape: You can create mechanical tension through heavy compound movements without generating significant soreness.
• 7:33
  Philip Pape: You can progressively overload by adding weights, reps or sets without chasing any sort of soreness or pain.
• 7:39
  Philip Pape: So this addresses the second part of the question.
• 7:43
  Philip Pape: Yes, you're absolutely doing enough if you are increasing weight in reps over time, regardless of the soreness level.
• 7:50
  Philip Pape: And, just as a quick aside, because we're talking about progressive overload and tracking and training and what matters for your physique.
• 7:57
  Philip Pape: This is something we definitely help out with in Physique University, which is where the member question comes from.
• 8:02
  Philip Pape: When you join, you get not only a custom nutrition plan if you use the special link in the show notes this is for podcast listeners only.
• 8:09
  Philip Pape: Not only do you get that, we have training templates that are designed around these principles and also flex around your days per week, your equipment access, your experience level, and none of them have to do with chasing soreness in any way.
• 8:22
  Philip Pape: And you could always join Physique University using the link in the show notes and try it out.
• 8:27
  Philip Pape: We've got a series of lessons that will onboard you into how to lift weights, how to breathe, how to brace, how to you know should you wear squat shoes, how to use a power rack, how to use rest periods and so on.
• 8:40
  Philip Pape: So, again, if you want to join Physique University to get all of that, it's still just $27 a month and if you use the special link in the show notes, you will get a custom nutrition plan absolutely free included in that.
• 8:50
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 8:51
  Philip Pape: Next up, I want to explain the sort of fascinating physiology behind why experienced lifters get less sore over time and why that's good for progress.
• 9:02
  Philip Pape: So this is called the repeated bout effect.
• 9:05
  Philip Pape: When you perform the same exercise pattern repeatedly, your body adapts, not just by getting stronger but becoming more resistant to exercise-induced damage, and this means less soreness over time, even as you're making better gains.
• 9:19
  Philip Pape: Your muscle fibers become more resilient to mechanical stress.
• 9:23
  Philip Pape: Your inflammatory response becomes more efficient.
• 9:26
  Philip Pape: Your nervous system coordinates movement patterns more smoothly.
• 9:31
  Philip Pape: Now for some of us that's good and at the same time means you have to continue challenging yourself over time.
• 9:37
  Philip Pape: It's kind of a double-edged sword.
• 9:39
  Philip Pape: So beginning lifters often do experience significant soreness in those first few days or even weeks, because everything is new to them.
• 9:46
  Philip Pape: Everything is novel.
• 9:47
  Philip Pape: Their muscles, their connective tissues, their nervous systems are all adapting simultaneously.
• 9:52
  Philip Pape: But then, as they progress, the soreness diminishes while the strength and muscle mass continue increasing.
• 9:57
  Philip Pape: For some people it happens very quickly.
• 9:59
  Philip Pape: For some people the soreness lasts a little bit longer and also it's affected by your recovery needs.
• 10:03
  Philip Pape: And this is why chasing soreness through constant exercise variation right what some people used to call muscle confusion, or if you look at the CrossFit community, they seem to put on a pedestal.
• 10:15
  Philip Pape: The idea of constantly varied, which we know, in and of itself has no benefit whatsoever other than it might be fun.
• 10:22
  Philip Pape: But if we're trying to make progress to something here, fun can't be the only variable.
• 10:26
  Philip Pape: It can interfere with your progress.
• 10:28
  Philip Pape: Is what I'm saying?
• 10:28
  Philip Pape: You're preventing your body from adapting efficiently to the movements that drive the best results.
• 10:33
  Philip Pape: Why do you think I have programs like Ironclad in our training templates that are actually built on lots and lots of increasing volume over time without changing the movements?
• 10:43
  Philip Pape: It's to create that efficient adaptation so that you could then get stronger and build more muscle.
• 10:48
  Philip Pape: So we've covered what DOMS is.
• 10:50
  Philip Pape: We've covered why it's not a progress indicator.
• 10:53
  Philip Pape: But soreness does tell you something useful about your training.
• 10:56
  Philip Pape: So I want to explain what that is.
• 10:58
  Philip Pape: It is telling you about the novelty.
• 11:02
  Philip Pape: So you've introduced a new exercise or rep range or training volume or movement pattern, and soreness often indicates an emphasis on eccentric contractions, like I alluded to earlier.
• 11:12
  Philip Pape: And this can actually be valuable for your muscle development when you program it the right way.
• 11:17
  Philip Pape: So that's one thing.
• 11:18
  Philip Pape: Soreness can also signal recovery issues.
• 11:19
  Philip Pape: This can actually be valuable for your muscle development when you program it the right way.
• 11:21
  Philip Pape: So that's one thing Soreness can also signal recovery issues.
• 11:24
  Philip Pape: So this is where I think it's very, very helpful.
• 11:25
  Philip Pape: If you are consistently getting excessive soreness from what I'll call your routine workouts or training sessions, that might indicate a lack of sleep, insufficient protein or calories, high stress levels, poor hydration, just too much volume, your body just isn't recovering efficiently between sessions.
• 11:46
  Philip Pape: Now, individual variability is huge here, as always, right, we know this.
• 11:51
  Philip Pape: Some people are genetically predisposed to more exercise-induced inflammation.
• 11:56
  Philip Pape: Others have like their muscle fiber composition is more resistant to damage.
• 12:01
  Philip Pape: And you know, neither of these indicate better or worse training outcomes.
• 12:05
  Philip Pape: It's just differences and you have to understand your body.
• 12:09
  Philip Pape: But here's where soreness can become counterproductive to your goals.
• 12:12
  Philip Pape: Extreme soreness this is the kind that makes it difficult to walk downstairs, where you're like man, I'm slammed, that crushed me, that killed me.
• 12:21
  Philip Pape: I can barely stand up.
• 12:22
  Philip Pape: I remember my first couple of times doing CrossFit.
• 12:25
  Philip Pape: I literally felt like I was going to die, like I was going to puke.
• 12:27
  Philip Pape: I had to lay down.
• 12:28
  Philip Pape: It was just insane, right?
• 12:30
  Philip Pape: That kind of soreness where you can't even lift your arms up is going to interfere with your training quality.
• 12:35
  Philip Pape: It just is.
• 12:37
  Philip Pape: When you are significantly sore, you're going to move differently, you're gonna have a decreased range of motion, you're gonna have less strength, you're gonna have poorer technique.
• 12:45
  Philip Pape: It's just this systemic fatigue emanating throughout your body, and so it creates a cascade of problems Poor movement quality.
• 12:54
  Philip Pape: What does that do?
• 12:55
  Philip Pape: Well, it increases injury risk.
• 12:56
  Philip Pape: Reduced strength means less mechanical tension, so you're actually not going to hit the intensity you intend.
• 13:02
  Philip Pape: Compromise technique is going to shift the load away from what you're trying to do in the gym, which is focus on specific movements and muscles and develop them.
• 13:13
  Philip Pape: And excessive soreness can set you back with time, with your recovery time.
• 13:17
  Philip Pape: It's not time efficient.
• 13:18
  Philip Pape: If you're so sore from Monday's workout that you can't train effectively for three or four more days, you're going to create a bottleneck in your frequency and then, if you do go into the gym while you're excessively sore, you may exacerbate the issue.
• 13:31
  Philip Pape: You know, worst case, best case, you're just going to train but then not really have much progress.
• 13:36
  Philip Pape: Right, we know that there's a certain amount of frequency, intensity and volume that are needed for optimal growth.
• 13:42
  Philip Pape: So, again, this is why the programs that I create, the templates that we have in Physique University, are designed around sustainable progression.
• 13:51
  Philip Pape: That's really the key here.
• 13:52
  Philip Pape: You know we focus on the training variables that drive results progressive overload, appropriate volume, optimal frequency and if you just ignore soreness completely, you're probably better off, except for its use as a negative indicator of too much of something or not enough recovery right Now.
• 14:10
  Philip Pape: The one thing I didn't mention with recovery is if you're doing a bunch of cardio, if you're doing a bunch of body weight stuff in between your training sessions, that could be making you sore too, and then it's interfering with everything else, including your main lifting sessions.
• 14:22
  Philip Pape: Now this brings us to the most practical part of today's episode.
• 14:25
  Philip Pape: If you should not track soreness, then what should you be monitoring instead?
• 14:34
  Philip Pape: All right, let's talk about the metrics that predict success with your training, right?
• 14:36
  Philip Pape: So if it's not soreness which we've said that that's the case now it's not your heart rate, it's not how much you sweat, right, it's not how you feel.
• 14:44
  Philip Pape: We want to be objective.
• 14:46
  Philip Pape: We want to use performance metrics that give you feedback so you can make informed choices, right?
• 14:50
  Philip Pape: And the member who wrote the question she's already doing a lot of this.
• 14:54
  Philip Pape: You can hear the way she framed the question like I'm doing this, this, this, this.
• 14:58
  Philip Pape: Now I'm trying to understand where soreness fits into the equation.
• 15:00
  Philip Pape: So the first thing is to track your strength progression.
• 15:03
  Philip Pape: Seems obvious but not everybody's doing it.
• 15:05
  Philip Pape: I've had advanced clients who join and they hadn't been tracking their workouts and I was quite surprised by this.
• 15:10
  Philip Pape: But it's more often than you think.
• 15:12
  Philip Pape: You need to track all your sessions, your exercises, your load sets, reps, and then how that progresses over time.
• 15:21
  Philip Pape: And to do that you need to know what did you do last time.
• 15:22
  Philip Pape: If your squat was 225 last time, you're probably going for maybe 230 this time, or maybe you're adding a rep, and that tells you not only what to go for but whether you're making progress, regardless of soreness.
• 15:33
  Philip Pape: So that's strength progression.
• 15:35
  Philip Pape: Then you have to monitor your volume.
• 15:36
  Philip Pape: Everybody I can't tell you the right volume for you.
• 15:39
  Philip Pape: It's gonna depend on your lifestyle, and what I mean by that is the amount of stress in your life, your individual response, and don't buy any of the malarkey about men and women being so different with training volume.
• 15:51
  Philip Pape: There are average.
• 15:52
  Philip Pape: There might be differences to the population level, and even now I'm coming to see there's probably not even that, to be honest that it's much more individual from person to person.
• 16:00
  Philip Pape: So volume is the whole, the total sets that you lift throughout the week, and some people can handle a lot, some people can't.
• 16:07
  Philip Pape: And also, if you're in a surplus or maintenance or deficit, it's going to be different.
• 16:10
  Philip Pape: And also if you're working sub maximally instead of very, at a very high load, that can affect how much volume you can take, because obviously the total tonnage is different, meaning the volume times the load right.
• 16:24
  Philip Pape: So as long as you are increasing in your overall volume, which is usually indicated by weight on the bar and or reps, you're getting the stimulus needed for adaptation.
• 16:33
  Philip Pape: Don't worry about soreness.
• 16:34
  Philip Pape: The next thing I would ask you to think about is your intensity.
• 16:40
  Philip Pape: How hard are you training during your sets?
• 16:42
  Philip Pape: Are you getting close to the rep shy?
• 16:44
  Philip Pape: Are you getting to the rep shy of failure that you're intending?
• 16:46
  Philip Pape: Or, if it sets across, it should feel, you know, a few reps shy of failure, depending on if we're talking compound lifts or isolation lifts.
• 16:53
  Philip Pape: The goal again is to create sufficient mechanical tension without excessive fatigue.
• 16:57
  Philip Pape: Right to fatigue, not soreness, doesn't matter.
• 17:00
  Philip Pape: Also, your body composition changes matter more than soreness, because if you're gaining muscle mass and you're losing body fat, you're improving your strength to weight ratio.
• 17:09
  Philip Pape: Again, who cares about soreness unless the soreness is holding you back?
• 17:14
  Philip Pape: And so, speaking of that, of recovery, since excessive soreness does often indicate recovery issues.
• 17:20
  Philip Pape: Let us walk through strategies that work for managing soreness from a recovery standpoint, so that you can get the best adaptations that we're looking for, because that's what the goal is of all of this training stuff that we do.
• 17:32
  Philip Pape: So what is the role of recovery here in managing soreness?
• 17:35
  Philip Pape: Well, the big one is sleep right.
• 17:38
  Philip Pape: That Muscle protein synthesis is going to peak when you're sleeping.
• 17:42
  Philip Pape: Most adults need at least seven, if not eight or nine, hours for optimal recovery, and if you get enough sleep, you'll probably actually get far less sore.
• 17:49
  Philip Pape: So now we're talking about more.
• 17:51
  Philip Pape: How do you manage the soreness itself?
• 17:53
  Philip Pape: Because in many cases, you're having soreness and you don't need to.
• 17:55
  Philip Pape: Having enough food and protein supports repair of your tissues.
• 17:59
  Philip Pape: People forget protein is not just to build muscle, it's to repair all tissues in your body.
• 18:06
  Philip Pape: That's why we need enough of those amino acids flooding our system right.
• 18:07
  Philip Pape: It's the remodeling of your body without the excessive inflammation because you don't have enough resources coming in, and this is where, when you're in a fat loss phase, you don't have as many resources.
• 18:16
  Philip Pape: Protein needs to be even higher than, or at least kept high, and you have to manage your volume and all the other things and your sleep and so on.
• 18:29
  Philip Pape: Hydration is also big right.
• 18:30
  Philip Pape: In fact, this is often the go-to for a lot of folks.
• 18:31
  Philip Pape: When you have cramping and soreness is just, you don't have enough fluid coming in.
• 18:33
  Philip Pape: There's your tissues all have.
• 18:35
  Philip Pape: I mean, we are full of water, right, your tissue has a balance of water.
• 18:38
  Philip Pape: Your tissues are always trying to remove waste and dehydration can exacerbate soreness and delay recovery.
• 18:45
  Philip Pape: Most people need at least half of their body weight plus 15 ounces of water a day, probably a lot more than that.
• 18:51
  Philip Pape: If you're training hard, if you live in hot climates, don't neglect hydration.
• 18:55
  Philip Pape: It's huge.
• 18:57
  Philip Pape: Then we have movement.
• 18:58
  Philip Pape: Here's the other thing.
• 18:58
  Philip Pape: People are on their desk all day, even though they lift weights, even though they go for walks.
• 19:01
  Philip Pape: If you're sitting down a lot, that's going to reduce your blood flow and that's going to increase your stiffness and soreness as well.
• 19:07
  Philip Pape: So, just getting up frequently and moving around, right, we're not talking cardio, we're talking walking, moving, yoga, mobility, whatever.
• 19:14
  Philip Pape: Whatever gets you up and moving doesn't matter.
• 19:16
  Philip Pape: Anything that promotes circulation without extra training, stress, right, we're not trying to go do more cardio and all of those things are really great for managing soreness.
• 19:26
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 19:26
  Philip Pape: Now, before we wrap up, I want to address all the recovery methods that you do see promoted online Real quick ice baths, foam rolling, supplements and what works in the context of evidence-based soreness management, because these do come up.
• 19:41
  Philip Pape: All right, foam rolling and massage probably provide some temporarily, mostly perceptual, relief.
• 19:48
  Philip Pape: I mean, I get a massage once a month and I know half of the reason I go is just because it feels good, you know it feels good.
• 19:54
  Philip Pape: The other half is I think there's probably benefit there to my fascial tissue on the outside of my muscles, for a little bit of my range of motion, for getting some extra.
• 20:04
  Philip Pape: I'll say stretching and, you know, digging into the tissue that I just wouldn't be doing on my own right For my shoulder, for example, for my lower back.
• 20:11
  Philip Pape: Similar thing with foam rolling.
• 20:13
  Philip Pape: They might make you feel better.
• 20:14
  Philip Pape: We don't know that they significantly accelerate the recovery process Again outside of a rehab setting.
• 20:19
  Philip Pape: I'm not talking about that.
• 20:20
  Philip Pape: I'm just talking about day-to-day soreness, all right, but some people swear by them.
• 20:23
  Philip Pape: Some people swear by Thera guns right, the self massage, really powerful massage gun.
• 20:27
  Philip Pape: So that's that's.
• 20:28
  Philip Pape: That's foam rolling and massage.
• 20:30
  Philip Pape: What about static stretching?
• 20:32
  Philip Pape: Static stretching apparently doesn't really prevent DOMS and it may provide some acute relief.
• 20:37
  Philip Pape: But I think you know my position on stretching is you don't really need it as you warm up.
• 20:42
  Philip Pape: You want to warm up, doing the lift and light movement is fine, but extended stretching protocols doesn't necessarily have any benefit and it could backfire in some cases.
• 20:52
  Philip Pape: But anyway, it's kind of seems agnostic when it comes to soreness.
• 20:56
  Philip Pape: What about cold water and cryotherapy?
• 20:58
  Philip Pape: Again, evidence is mixed.
• 20:59
  Philip Pape: I'm sorry for all of you that are like gung-ho about cold plunges these days.
• 21:03
  Philip Pape: In fact, the more we learn about icing, the more we think it may actually arrest the positive inflammatory response that you need.
• 21:10
  Philip Pape: They might reduce perceived soreness, but they also can blunt some adaptation signals if you're using a lot.
• 21:16
  Philip Pape: So if you don't want to do ice baths, you don't need to.
• 21:19
  Philip Pape: I'm sorry, you just don't.
• 21:21
  Philip Pape: And I'm not even going to talk about saunas.
• 21:23
  Philip Pape: That's one area that I think could be helpful, but I actually didn't come up with any notes on that, so I apologize.
• 21:29
  Philip Pape: What about medicines?
• 21:29
  Philip Pape: What about NSAIDs like ibuprofen?
• 21:31
  Philip Pape: They do reduce inflammation and the perception of soreness, but you don't wanna be chronically taking those and they can impair your muscle growth as well.
• 21:38
  Philip Pape: They can stop the inflammatory response, which which is part of the adaptation process.
• 21:42
  Philip Pape: Remember, inflammation is not a bad word, it's a neutral word of something your body naturally does.
• 21:47
  Philip Pape: The question is excessive inflammation, chronic inflammation, versus normal adaptation inflammation.
• 21:52
  Philip Pape: So if we're constantly suppressing inflammation, it can interfere with long-term gains.
• 21:57
  Philip Pape: All right, we covered what soreness is, why it's misleading, what it actually tells you and how to manage it properly.
• 22:02
  Philip Pape: But I want to leave you with one more what it actually tells you and how to manage it properly.
• 22:05
  Philip Pape: But I want to leave you with one more insight to reframe how successful lifters think about their training.
• 22:09
  Philip Pape: Most of the successful lifters that I work with, that I talk to every day, the ones who are making consistent progress they're really into lifting because of the result it gives them.
• 22:17
  Philip Pape: They never talk about soreness.
• 22:19
  Philip Pape: They just.
• 22:20
  Philip Pape: They just never do.
• 22:22
  Philip Pape: I mean, you might have this odd day where somebody's like, yeah, I tried Nordic curls for the first time in two years and I got a little bit sore.
• 22:30
  Philip Pape: That's kind of the extent of it, unless they're doing something stupid outside the gym and they get sore from that.
• 22:37
  Philip Pape: That can happen.
• 22:38
  Philip Pape: But I'm talking about just their training and they're focusing on performance.
• 22:42
  Philip Pape: They're focusing on the lift and their recovery quality and the long-term progression.
• 22:45
  Philip Pape: They understand that.
• 22:47
  Philip Pape: Adaptations about providing the right stimulus consistently over time, not maximizing acute discomfort.
• 22:53
  Philip Pape: I don't even really want workouts to feel feel hard in the discomfort way.
• 22:59
  Philip Pape: They should feel hard in a challenging way.
• 23:01
  Philip Pape: That's making progress.
• 23:02
  Philip Pape: Having said that, I know there are certain lifts everybody has.
• 23:05
  Philip Pape: It's like the lift that they are not a fan of.
• 23:07
  Philip Pape: Okay, but that's a different type of discomfort.
• 23:10
  Philip Pape: I think that's more mental than anything.
• 23:12
  Philip Pape: But I think it's a big irony here is that once you stop chasing soreness and sweat and the YouTube workouts and the endurance training and the P90X and the F45 and the CrossFit and the boot camps and the group classes, all that stuff, and just step back and do some basic lifts, you have plenty of rest period, enjoy pushing yourself and challenging yourself to increase over time.
• 23:33
  Philip Pape: You often end up with better satisfaction and joy from your training.
• 23:38
  Philip Pape: You feel more capable, you are stronger.
• 23:41
  Philip Pape: You see the measurable improvements week to week.
• 23:44
  Philip Pape: You build confidence in the program because you have objective data showing it works, because I'll tell you, feeling wiped after a workout is not objective data that shows it works.
• 23:57
  Philip Pape: So this shift from a pain focus to a performance focus is often that transition from I was a casual exerciser to now I'm a serious trainee and that is when people start seeing the physique changes that they've been working toward, and we would love to help you do that.
• 24:15
  Philip Pape: That's what we do all the time.
• 24:16
  Philip Pape: That is how I design my training templates and guidance around them.
• 24:21
  Philip Pape: So soreness is a normal response to a novel stimulus, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient for muscle growth and strength development.
• 24:28
  Philip Pape: You can get sore from ineffective activities.
• 24:30
  Philip Pape: You can make excellent progress with minimal soreness once you are adapted.
• 24:34
  Philip Pape: So focus on progressive overload, appropriate volume, recovery, quality, track your performance, weight sets, reps, body composition over time.
• 24:42
  Philip Pape: These provide much better feedback about whether your training is working.
• 24:47
  Philip Pape: The goal isn't to punish yourself with miserable workouts that leave you hobbling around as much as that seems to be a mark of pride in some circles.
• 24:55
  Philip Pape: The goal is to provide your muscles with the stimulus they need to adapt and grow stronger, while allowing sufficient recovery for that adaptation to occur.
• 25:04
  Philip Pape: All right Hope I made it clear.
• 25:07
  Philip Pape: If this episode did make it clear, if it clarified your thinking about soreness versus progress, just text it to a friend who's still judging their workouts by how much they hurt afterward.
• 25:16
  Philip Pape: Share this with someone who needs to hear that effective training doesn't require suffering.
• 25:22
  Philip Pape: Until next time, keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember progress happens when you train consistently and recover well, not when you're too sore to move.
• 25:31
  Philip Pape: This is Philip Pape and you've been listening to Wits and Weights.
• 25:34
  Philip Pape: I'll talk to you next time.