Dealing with muscle soreness

Use the muscle. I always plan a light cardio session the day after leg day. A slow run or an easy bike ride are great for sore legs. Using the muscle increase blood flow which helps speed up repair/recovery of sore muscles.

Foam rolling can also help.

I will say that Epsom salt baths seem to help too, but that may be more psychological than physiological.

Does anyone have suggestions on soothing muscle soreness? My husband takes ibuprofen and that completely takes his muscle soreness away. For me it does nothing. Aspirin and aleve don't do a thing either. I can't take aceitominophen as I'm allergic.

A hot shower or hot bath don't do much and what little they do is very very temporary. Stretching doesn't help either. Moving regularly helps reduce stiffness.

So...any other suggestions? I do not get any sort of positive feeling from being sore (I know some people feel good because of the hard work that got them there) and if anything it's a bit of a deterrent to working out. Since I only do stuff I really enjoy, I keep doing them but the thought is there in the back of my head. If it was an activity I didn't care for I'd probably skip it.

Compression garments were shown to have the following benefits when worn during or after exercise:

Decreased muscle soreness. People who wore compression garments while exercising [6, 7, 25, 32] or after exercising [2,9, 22, 23, 27, 32] had less muscle soreness.

Decreased swelling and edema. Compression garments were shown to decrease swelling and fluid retention in the lower body (typically the calf and/or ankle) when worn either while exercising [32] or after exercise [22, 32].

Improved blood-flow, muscle oxygenation, and cardiac output. Compression garments were shown to improve muscle oxygenation [5, 10, 18, 21] and to increase blood flow to and from the muscle [10, 20]. The garments were also shown to improve cardiac output [14, 29] and to decrease heartrate while exercising [13, 19]. Lastly, participants wearing the garments also felt that they exerted themselves less when exercising [6, 15], or improved their performance times [11, 28].

Decreased muscle damage. By measuring markers of muscle breakdown, investigators were able to determine whether or not compression garments could decrease the occurrence of muscle damage when exercising. Interestingly, the compression garments were found to decrease the occurrence of muscle damage when worn either during exercise [7, 32] or afterwards [2, 32].

Improved muscle recovery. When worn after exercising, compression garments were shown to improve muscle recovery [22, 23, 27] and to improve athletic output and strength in subsequent workouts [27]. This may be a by-product of having less muscle damage.

Source: Biological Conclusions