New to the exercise world! Please help

bitbits24
bitbits24 Posts: 7 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Hello everyone! I have never consistently exercised. I would start a fad diet, exercise for a couple days then give up so I really don't know exactly what I'm doing and my family is giving me mixed advice (none of them exercise regularly).

So onto the question: I started exercising about 30+ minutes daily and my body is sore. Are you supposed to exercise through the soreness or do you wait for it to go away? Most of them are telling me that you're supposed to wait because you'll ruin your muscles but if I stop now, I feel like I might never actually stick to it. So is it unhealthy to exercise with sore muscles??

Replies

  • a45cal
    a45cal Posts: 85 Member
    While that muscle soreness you feel after exercise is technically caused by damage being done to your muscles, that's actually just part of your body's process of getting stronger. When the soreness has gone, it means you've healed up those tiny muscle tears and the muscle is that little bit more capable of handling the exercise next time.

    Ideally, you want to let the muscle recover completely before working it again so that it has time to complete that strengthening process. But your body's pretty resilient; using sore muscles a few days in a row isn't going to cause permanent damage to them. Though you should take at least one day off from exercising per week, just to give them some rest and recovery time.

    Personally, I try to vary my workouts so that I'm using different body parts on alternating days, and am therefore giving sore muscles time to rest while still getting in exercise. You might try doing things that work your lower body one day (like running on a treadmill or doing squats) and things that don't use the same muscles next time (like push-ups).

    Apart from that, you can reduce the soreness a bit by taking hot baths. And be sure you get enough sleep, since that's when your body does its repair work.

    I hope that's helpful.
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
    Start exercising every other day, don't go from nothing to working out every day.

    Walking is a great place to start.
  • feisty_bucket
    feisty_bucket Posts: 1,047 Member
    TavistockToad wrote: »
    Start exercising every other day, don't go from nothing to working out every day.

    Walking is a great place to start.

    Yeah, good stuff here already. You didn't tell us what sort of exercise you're doing?

    Basic guidelines:
    1. walking, I consider a "general well-being" sort of thing that is best to do daily, for everyone. Preferably outside in nature (or as close as you can manage) for psychological impact.

    2. harder stuff (weight lifting, hard cardio) is in it's own category. These shouldn't be done back to back. For example, don't do bench presses on Monday and then again on Tuesday. That's counter-productive, because the rest/off day is when your body is rebuilding and strengthening itself. It's a cycle. Stimulate, rest, repeat. If people cut the cycle off halfway through, they're messing up.

    Being sore as a beginner is totally normal, expected, and will stop happening within a week or two of consistent effort.

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