Sore leg muscles and the best cure!

Sore leg muscles during an exercise program are  natural changes your body goes through. If you did a sport or an activity before you started a running program that involved using a lot of the muscles you use for running, you may not feel as stiff and sore the next day.

But…

If you are starting a new program you will feel soreness because you haven’t used those muscles.  Your muscles are now building and tiny tears develop while you are strengthening the muscle. These tears can produce sore leg muscles where the pain can last up to a week or more!

I have been receiving lots e-mails about sore leg muscles!

How to treat and heal quickly heal:

• Rest… but also do an activity like a consistent like slow walk. Something like tennis would be very jarring on already sore muscles. It is also good to try to do the same exercise gently (run/walk or running) after a 3 day rest. If you spread your days too far apart you run into the same muscle soreness again.
  

• Try not to sit for too long…and if it hurts to get up off a chair - do some gentle stretches! This is good to get the blood moving in the area. If you have to sit for a long time stretch your legs every half hour and get up and move around.

• Do a gentle message on the area with some deep rub sports cream. This also gets the blood moving in the area, make sure that it is gentle message.

• Ice or take a cool bath this helps stop the build up of lactic acid that is causing some of the pain. Doing this also prevents swelling.

• Some people say do the same activity a couple days later. Sure if you are not feeling too sore and you feel as though your legs are healing. If you are feeling any sign of excruciating pain, you should take more days off.

• Over the counter pain killer like Ibuprofen.

• Lastly, if the pain is really bad and you think you may of injured yourself, take a trip to the doctor.

As soon as your body becomes accustom to the activity the pain will go away. It is a good sign that you are building muscle. Building muscle is what you want, so that you become a more efficient runner!

I’ll give you more tips on how to relieve muscle pain next post…

A year ago I purchased this e-book, it was really good at explaining the proper way to eat and what foods burn calories more efficiently. It is long, but I thought informative. Sometimes it is hard to figure out why one day you had an easy run and other days you are dragging. I believe it has to do with how we eat and when. This book deals with whole foods and not synthetically made foods boxed in the grocery stores.

Take a look you might like…