ouch!

mkoff32

I used to play basketball regularly before I went inactive alltogether. But I've been hitting the gym regularly working pretty much all the muscle groups. I decided to get back to playing because I enjoyed it so much. I played on saturday and sunday this past weekend. I was worried about my cardio playing full court, but that ended up not being an issue, I actually hung in there. However, what I was very surprised about was how freaking sore I was sunday morning! I played just a few hours saturday and my whole body is sore! I must have used muscles that I didn't know I had because I thought I was hitting most every muscle group in the gym! I toughed it up and played sunday too despite the soreness. I'm looking forward to being back in basketball shape!

byHISstrength

Did you stretch before and/or after playing? If not, that is probably why you are so sore. And strectching is so important.

mkoff32

Well... I stretched after. I am sore in places that I've never been sore before. Like when I walk today, just the motion of my foot bending when I take steps, that hurts! How do you stretch for that? lol

Azdak

Stretching has little or nothing to do with the type of muscle soreness you experienced (which is not to say stretching isn't beneficial, but it does little or nothing to either prevent or treat muscle soreness).

You have just had a practical lesson in what we call "specificity of training". As the name implies, the principle of specificity states that exercise training effects are specific to the type of activity, muscle groups being exercised, angle of movement, speed of movement, eccentric loading, metabolic system utilized, etc, etc etc.

Depending on your workout routine, there can be some general carryover (cardiac conditioning) from your workout routine to a sports activity, but the only way to fully "condition" yourself for playing basketball is to play basketball. Even a well-conditioned person who launches themselves into "a few hours" of a new sport without building up gradually will experience---well, what you experienced.

When we are kids, we can get away with that because we are constantly doing different types of activities (or at least we did when I was a kid--back in the dark ages), but as we become adults, our activity patterns becoming much more restricted repetitive, so new things have a greater negative effect.