For the love of God, tell me it gets better

[clairesterling]

Because I think my weight training instructor is trying to murder me.

 

I'm a 6'0", 125 lb, very-nearly-21-year-old girl. Although every high school coach I've ever encountered has tried their damnedest to recruit me, I have never played a sport. I was the kid who got detention for reading during P.E.. My fastest mile time was 10 minutes. My idea of exercise is 20 minutes of gentle hatha yoga once a week.

 

I would say I'm out of shape, but I don't think I've ever been in shape to begin with.

 

Lately, I've been trying my best to challenge my anxiety disorder/reach as many feasible goals as possible in life.  One of my goals requires me to have enough upper body strength to haul my weight around on two arms. I'm also incredibly anxious about gyms.  So I made myself sign up for weight training class at my community college.

 

The class description said "all levels! we'll teach you everything you need to know! anyone can join!" and a bunch of other encouraging things. 

 

Monday night was my first class. I had no idea what I was doing. I felt like I was dying after the warm up. The instructor gave us 25 lb weights and told us to do goblet squats. I couldn't do them right, so he told me to size down until I could. I ended up landing on 12.5 lbs.

 

After that, the work out was over and I was a little bit sore. The next day, I reached the level of soreness I expected - pain walking across campus and up and down six flights of stairs. Whatever. But towards the end of the day, I noticed I was limping. I almost could not get up from being seated on the ground. I couldn't bend over to grab my backpack. I went to sleep, and awoke in the middle of the night with the munchies. I discovered it took 5 minutes of pained limping to get downstairs and 10 minutes of me literally dragging myself by the banister to get up stairs.

 

Everything hurts. I have never been this sore in my life.  I have my second weight training class tomorrow.  I absolutely want to continue, but oh my God. I literally can't use my body. Is that normal? When does it go away? Did I do too much?  Am I going to hurt myself if I show up to class tomorrow night?

[Ivan]

Your are experiencing delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). It's normal for people with low activity levels on taking up a taxing physical activity.

 

Two things about DOMS. First, your body will adapt to your new activity level, and DOMS won't be a problem (unless you further increase your activity level, etc). Second, using your muscles will help. Trying to avoid further activity will actually make things worse. You'll feel much better after your second class.

[Lara]

I've been in your place just once. I mean, I have doms sometimes, but I remember once when I felt exactly like you. I could not move myself without pain, not even sit up or down. It was horrible. It took days to go away. It happened because I was a very unfit young girl and I made a lot of intense exercise on a weekend.

It will go away in a few days, do not worry. But do not exercice more until the big pain goes away. Maybe you can take short walks to help. Maybe some soft stretching. And when you come back to workout, do it gradually. If you are going to continue with the class at the community college, I'd suggest you talk to the trainer and tell him which is your actual fitness level.

[Draken50]

Yeah, it does get better generally speaking. Sounds like a pretty big case of overwork. 

 

First and foremost, the more you do the exercises the less sore you get assuming you aren't constantly overworking what your doing.

 

Second. Higher repetitions tend to make people more sore, than more weight for lower repetitions. Someone who goes to do 100 bodyweight squats is going to be hurting a lot more than the guys who are putting 315 lbs. on their backs and doing a total of 15, 5 at a time.

 

Third, some trainers run high rep exhausting routines because they either think it's what gets the best results, or very commonly, becuase the people that come to them are more likely to believe it will give results.

 

Either way, you're young, and as long as you eat and sleep to recover. You'll probably adapt to whatever they're throwing at you. If your goals are more strength oriented. You might look at Starting Strength, and toss in an assistance exercise per day to get to chin ups, and then once you can do them.. do them.

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

Like others said, it's DOMs. They're worse when first taking up an activity but whill be less and less so after each time you do it until you fully acclimate. For me, they peak 2 days after the thing that causes them. Also like others said, doing the activity again helps alleviate them, just make sure you warm up thuroughly as those muscles will be tighter when you have DOMs than otherwise. Doing that activity will make them more intense for the first few reps, but by the end of the workout they won't be anywhere near as intense.

 

For me, I get my worst DOMs from barbell squatting afetr a layoff of not doing them. 1 month means I'm going to ge DOMs of the same level as when I frst started lifting. When I have them, I try ot get up every 30-40 minutes and do 10 air squats. Moving those muscles through the range of motion that caused them helps get them to go away faster.

[AlexCold]

What everyone else said is all true. It's just DOMS. Some active recovery will help with those muscles. 

 

May I offer a suggestion? Eat more! Get enough protein for muscle repair and building (I'd suggest over 80g minimum) and whatever you like after. But eat a lot. End the night with cookies or ice cream. You want those calories to build muscle, because you definitely don't need to lose weight. 

[Anno]

In my family we call what you've done 'blowing out a muscle.'  I say it's different from DOMS in that DOMS makes you favour your arm; blowing it out makes you unable to lift a teacup. 

 

It's normal enough.  I've gone through it a number of times when doing repetitive work (helping a friend finish a basement, etc) and once in my gut when I was playing with an Ab Roller and didn't know what I was doing.  You learn to feel it coming after a while.  When working you'll go from the soreness of 'I'll really feel this in the morning' to 'I can feel something about to give in there.'  Hard to describe, but you'll get it. 

 

Best advice, and I hate suggesting drugs, is to take Robax or similar before bed. If you can, of course. There's a muscle relaxant in it that'll help you sleep and free up your muscles to help them heal since they're probably very tense.  Also: eat more.  Protein especially.  From your description, you don't have much, or any, extra weight on you.  The muscle repairs have to come from somewhere. 

 

In my experience, you're looking at a day or two without real use of the affected muscles, then slowly returning to normal over a week.  Try not to over stress them for the first day or two, then force yourself to use them as you would in your normal day-to-day until they're okay. 

[clairesterling]

Thanks you guys!

 

So I looked up DOMS and yeah, that's it. Or I've been poisoned.

Either way, some of you told me to rest more and some of you told me to exercise anyway.

I can't rest really - I'll get kicked out of the class. I have to attend, so I'm just going to try and talk to him about it.

I also took some advice and repeated a bunch of the exercises that I did on monday night. My arm is still about to break off and I'm really wobbly when I squat, but I do feel a tiny bit better and I can get out of a sitting position without crying. So thank you!