Very new to exercise, pain and recovery questions

Normal DOMS, delayed-onset muscle soreness is just that, in the muscles. Be very careful about overworking joints, roughly put. While working muscles gently through DOMS is fine, it may not be fine out of the perspective of tendons etc. Depends entirely on what your activity is and how you're doing it.

If you try running, for instance couch-to-5K should give only a bit of soreness, but nothing that seriously "sticks out". If pain is one-sided, your running form is poor and you need to investigate how to correct it. If you try to run more than three times a week, you're heading towards injury.

How can you tell pain from pain? Many swear by foam rollers, icing, etc. but I still haven't used any of that, because I don't feel I'm "advanced" enough yet and haven't had enough muscle soreness of the type that requires lots of measures for me to deal with it.

Any sort of pain that means you've really hurt yourself? Use your head. I don't mean this in a rude way, but seriously, read up and use your judgement.

You're supposed to be able to keep training for a long time, so why make such haste? Take it slowly and let your body get used to using other muscles than your eyes for reading. Your body will thank you and your experience will be pleasant due to avoiding injuries. There's no glory in having to stay away for months from running because you did too much at once.

Drink lots of water, stretch and work it out. We LOVE DOMS!

By the way OP, if you're very very new to exercise of any sort, and want to set yourself up well for anything you would like to do in the future, you could do a lot worse than look into a bodyweight resistance programme that you can do at home or anywhere else a couple of times a week.

All decent ones start gently, and will help you develop a base of strength and endurance, as well as helping correct and improve any joint issues you may have from inactivity. Also as it's resistance training (just using your bodyweight instead of physical weights), you will get other supplementary benefits like improved bone density, etc. There's no weight involved, just your own bodyweight, so the risks of pushing yourself too far too fast are lessened, and such a programme will give you a good base for other activities also. For example, I'm finding I can walk faster and for longer, from the workout I give my legs. Likewise, progressing through different bodyweight squats has helped eliminate some niggly issues I had with one of my knees.

Anyway, perhaps food for thought

1. They say active recovery is best. Gentle walking or very easy swimming will get blood moving and clearing things up. But really the aim is to be very light about it. I've found sometimes though that I just can't move, so in that case I don't.

I had soreness from a workout 2 days ago. Couldn't do much the next day and kind of worried. Day after that, went for a long walk (probably longer than I needed - it's hard to let go of the idea that all activity is about burning calories... But it did help.

I think if it hurts, pay attention. Don't push it.

2. Yes Ime. I don't have a foam roller but self massage after a hot shower does help. I pound and knead and rub the crap out of my thighs and calves, and let my leg passively fall over my hands (made into fists) or a broomstick handle, and roll kind of like you would a foam roller. I use coconut oil to reduce friction (it's a good moisturizer too).
3. Asymmetrical pain, sharp vs sore pain, twinges that happen during or immediately after exercising.

Also, now this is just my opinion, I think if your body's had almost 40 years of inactivity, a) it's probably not going to take kindly to a huge and sudden increase in activity, especially impact activity - your connective tissue is already kind of degrading as well and b) it might be that you've intuitively stayed away from exercise because it's hurt you, because of bad biomechanics. I can say that this was the case for me. I jumped into running and plyometrics in my early thirties after 15 years of nothing doing and now have multiple chronic injuries to show for it. If I were to do it again, I'd stay away from impact altogether. And I'd work on strengthening my stabilizers first, through Pilates or similar, to sort out my biomechanics. You just get the one set of knees, and you want to be able to be active into your later years. Because the benefits of fitness extend to protection from not only CV and metabolic problems, but dementia and related neurodegenerative diseases, so you want to be able to be fit all through life. Off my soapbox

gettingsmall wrote: »

I am 39 years old and have just started to exercise. Most of my life I've been into things that don't require much effort, reading, movies, etc but lately I've been really getting the whole point of exercise - the point is to push myself to see what I am capable of. So I have been. Which brings up a few questions I have about recovery times, what pain is OK to push through, when I should not push on. Thanks.

1. The pain and stiffness the next day after a work out, whats the best way to work with this? Should I do some light exercise, heavy excersise or should I do nothing and let it heal?
2. Does massage help with that?
3. Is there any sort of pain that means "you've really hurt yourself and should probably stop and get it checked out"?

Any advice you can offer this noob is always appreciated.

First of all, congratulations on taking action on becoming active.

Some soreness is normal after working out. You're moving, stretching and contracting things that haven't been stressed before. If you're in severe pain (you can't get out of bed, you can't put weight on your leg or open a jar) the next day, you're working too hard. It's called DOM Delayed Onset Muscular soreness. If you're just a little uncomfortable it's still normal.

Massage will help if you haven't injured yourself.

Yes, pain that persists and you can't move or walk you should get checked out.