Mastering Muscle Soreness

Muscle Soreness

An alarm clock wakes you up from the middle of a sound slumber. It's time to go but your eyes are heavy and your body wants to go back to sleep. You swivel your legs over the side of the bed and stand up as a wave of pain passes over your body. An aggressive met-con or weights workout has left you with a serious case of post-workout muscles soreness but you know you've got to perform again later in the day. As you make some coffee you ponder how to get your body ready for the next workout...

Sound familiar? 

Days like these used to be commonplace for me, I've had more of these than I can count. 20 or 30 hours a week of sprinting, jumping, throwing, and lifting can do that to you. My experiences have led me through necessity to find the best methods of accelerating recovering from strenuous exercise. Although the exact cellular causes of Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) are currently unknown, it doesn't really matter because this stuff works regardless of what is going on. 

Maximizing Recovery
After being forced to seek out the best methods of recovery and for mitigating muscle soreness. Here are the things that worked for me, with the most effective first. Note that what will be most effective for you is probably whatever aspect you are currently most deficient in.

• Sleeping a lot: Try to get 9.5 hours of sleep a night in a totally dark and quiet room. Magnesium and melatonin help a lot with this. Natural Calm is by far the most effective magnesium supplement I've found... 2-3 tsps in a cup of hot water an hour before bed really chills me out. Everyone I've given it to raves about it. Time release melatonin is you best bet, as I have found that I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with the instant release. 
• Eating for recovery: This means follow the same basic guidelines: Plenty of protein, fat, and avoiding inflammatory foods (grains, sugar, n-6 PUFA). If your pretty lean, some sweet potatoes or yams will also accelerate recovery. Drink a lot of water. If you are someone who tolerates dairy products, a couple glasses of whole milk after a hard workout is a powerful recovery agent. My favorite is goat milk as it tends to be less allergenic and insuligenic according to Robb Wolf. 
• Massage work: This one is critical. Using various massage tools and information from the Trigger Point Therapy Workbook, I felt like I was given a new body without any of the previous aches, pains, and stiffness. Crucial for increasing sports performance. Most versatile are a foam roller and a lacrosse ball. Can be done before, after, or during workouts. I do one to three 5-15 minute massage sessions on most days. A Tiger tail and Theracane have also been extremely beneficial for me. Best is if you can find a good partner to trade massages with.
• Warming up right: Doing dynamic mobility work and making sure my muscles are hot helps a lot for preventing excessive soreness. Magnificent Mobility by Eric Cressey is a great place to start. 
• Recovery workouts: Do something that takes out the eccentric motion of exercise, which creates most of the soreness. Pulling a sled is one of my favorites.
• Enzymes: In-season I noticed that some systemic enzymes like wobenzym or something similar decreased muscle soreness a lot. However, once my CRP (systemic inflammation levels) got really low from diet and sleep, the enzymes no longer had the same benefit. Same thing with the tumeric- works if your inflammation levels are high, effects drop off as inflammation is lower.
• Heat: I never found much of a benefit from ice baths. They did make muscles less painful in the short term (numb) but didn't accelerate recovery at all. I did them every day for 3 months then stopped and noticed no difference in recovery. Heat always worked better for recovery for me.
• Don't do stupid shit: If you just did heavy deadlifts yesterday and go out to flip a 300lb tire for a 100 meters, this is counterproductive, you are a dumbass, and you will be painfully sore for a week. Don't ask how I know this. 

Any other ideas? Leave a comment and let me know what has worked for you.