Here’s where it gets sticky though: being sore after a workout does not always mean muscles are being damaged. “If you actually sample the muscle and look for the repair or damage, when you’re getting sore does not necessarily match up with the extent of the damage and how the damage is healing,” says review co-author Brad Schoenfeld, PhD candidate and exercise science lecturer at Lehman College. This means your body could be feeling the ache without any actual injury to the muscle—which means no added protein and, unfortunately, no muscle growth. The review authors point to past studies that have proven certain kinds of exercise, such as downhill treadmill running or eccentric cycling, indeed make your body sore without any indication of hypertrophy (aka muscle cell growth.) But even in cases when the soreness really does come hand-in-hand with muscle damage and growth, too much of that type of injury can also be detrimental to the body’s ability to develop more muscle, says Michele Olson, PhD, an exercise physiology professor at Auburn University. “Painful muscle soreness could backfire by decreasing exercise frequency, i.e. the person might lay off exercise for too long, missing regular workout days,” Dr. Olson says. “So the muscles would not receive the needed work to continue to develop and hypertrophy.” The bottom line: While soreness can indicate you’ve worked a muscle in a way it hasn’t been worked before, you certainly don’t need to be sore to build your muscles, Schoenfeld says. So how do you know how effective your workout is, if not by how sore you feel afterwards? Schoenfeld suggests keeping a log to track your exercise progress. In time, you should be able to do more of whatever type of exercise you’re doing. If you can run longer, lift more weight, or complete more reps, you’re on your way to more toned muscles and a stronger body. More from Prevention: Burn More Calories In Less Time
