Personal answers: how much pain is it normal to feel after training? – GOOD SHAPE

It could be the increase in charge, a new series or even the first time you step into the gym: muscle discomfort, one hour or another, will appear. And there’s nothing wrong with that, you just have to pay attention to the intensity of it. “In the first few weeks of a new stimulus, the pain appears after almost every session. However, it cannot be too strong to the point of preventing the performance of daily tasks, such as lowering and going down the stairs”, explains physical educator Pedro Gorgulho, technical director of the Biofisic gym network.

Every time we work out, the muscles contract, relax and increase in temperature, generating a certain stress in their fibers – or microlesions, speaking in a more technical language. But calm down! Despite the bad name, these microlesions are important for the hypertrophy. When recovering from them, the body starts a small inflammatory process and sends nutrients and other substances to the site, which regenerate the muscle and make it slightly bigger. It’s okay that at a slightly unpleasant cost, isn’t it?

And even the one who faces the sweat session for years is not free. The increase of weightschange in exercises or even in the way they are performed are considered new stimuli that can generate pain — which appears from three or four hours after the activity, reaches its maximum in 24 hours and lasts up to 72 hours.

But what to do?

It’s important to intersperse training and work only one region at a time. “It becomes unsustainable to maintain the practice repeatedly, once the body enters the mechanism of overtraining (when there is no muscle recovery time before another session). With a low-calorie diet and few hours of sleep per night, the condition can progress to more serious injuries”, says the educator. Therefore, respect the weekly plan put together by your personal (one day for the legs and another for the upper limbs, for example).

If the discomfort is mild, it is worth a massage to activate blood circulation and accelerate the regeneration process (post-workout activities such as bike It is walk light will do too), in addition to eating well and getting enough sleep. What Pedro does not indicate are the drugs and relaxants. “The function of pain is to signal that the body needs a rest. The analgesic masks the objective and leads the person to ignore the signal, repeating the exercises on the same limb the next day”.