Comment by donatj
1 day ago
> Less pain
Is there anything to back this up? The people I know who work out are always complaining about their muscles and joints.
1 day ago
> Less pain
Is there anything to back this up? The people I know who work out are always complaining about their muscles and joints.
There's a difference between soreness and pain. My muscles get sore all the time from exercise, but it's not painful. That soreness just tells me I'm probably going to be a little bit stronger because of the exercise I just did. (Of course it's a continuum: certain higher levels of soreness mean I probably overdid it.)
Joint pain is a whole other thing, though. Usually joint pain means that you're doing some sort of exercise incorrectly, or that you're using too much weight or intensity for your current level of physical fitness. Or you have a previous injury that can't fully heal and there are some exercises that you just shouldn't be doing, but you do them anyway.
But I think the author is talking about less pain in a different way. For example, I threw out my lower back 25 years ago in college, and it's never been the same since. But doing core exercises and strengthening the muscles around that area means much less chance of pain doing regular day-to-day activities.
Soreness isn't ideal. It won't make you stronger. Actually, it might make your recovery slower.
First time I've ever heard that soreness = something wrong. Isn't soreness basically guaranteed to some degree if you've done enough work to actually build strength?
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> There's a difference between soreness and pain.
Sorry, but overexerted muscle feels exactly the same for me as the one hit with something hard and heavy or one that received a dozen injections that had a bit of tissue damage as a side effect.
> Usually joint pain means that you're doing some sort of exercise incorrectly
Joint and ligament pain means that you do too much of exactly what you are doing and you should do something at least a bit different. There's no such thing as correct or incorrect. You can do literally anything, just not too much. You only need to be careful because for some movements in some people 1 rep is too much already.
There's a big difference between recovery pain and chronic pain. Also, if someone has joint pain, they are doing the wrong exercises. For example, running trashes my knees, but biking does not. Also, picking up heavy shit (weights - squats and deadlifts) is the only thing that resolved lower back pain (from sitting all day).
I’m in the same exact boat with deadlifts helping my back pain from my desk job.
Doing anything more than you should will trash something in your body. How much of something you should be doing? Pain is a good indicator. I you are below 40 you shouldn't feel it at all. If you are above, you should feel it a bit and observe it closely while reducing the load. If it gets weaker with time, you have appropriate load, if it doesn't or gets stronger, your load is still too high.
Some people just have bad knees, you know. But what you said for the most part is accurate in terms of exercise.
1 reply →
Some ways to exercise avoid injury & get results, and some.. don’t.
I’m a triathlete of 4 years now - love to be sore but have never been injured & unable to train.
There are three things you must do:
1. good technique: lift with the right muscles, run at the right cadence & target heart rate.
2. listen to your body when it needs less or more load.
3. treat recovery as equally important as exercise itself. Exercise’s mirror.
That said, instead of actual complaints, your friends might be social signaling! Bringing it up to bond over the joy of exercise. Humans do that subconsciously, and there is a ton of joy to bond over!
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If you think the comment doesn't belong here, downvote or flag it. That goes for things you think are LLM-generated or human-generated. Commenting about LLM-generated speculation is just noise, and I regret spending this time replying to you on this topic when I could be doing absolutely anything else.
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When you start working out, you will have soreness in your muscles from lactic acid because your body isn’t used to it.
Once you get in a routine of doing it at least twice a week you won’t get that soreness anymore. People who start working out, then miss a month, then start back experience it all the time. Consistency is key.
When you start drinking something like unsweetened tea, initially it's almost unbearably bitter. But as you drink it long enough, it feels less and less bitter. It didn't get any less bitter, you just impaired your ability to sense this kind of bitterness.
I wonder what happens with muscle soreness. Do they get actually get less sore after consistent exercise? Or do you just blunt your nervous system into not detecting chemical signatures of the damage? I'm guessing it's the second case because people here are commenting that after exercising long enough you can still have gains but no pain of muscle soreness.
They get less sore, because they're more adapted to the stress of exercise. The hardest DOMS comes from movements you're not used to.
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I've wondered about that too.
My personal thoughts and anecdote, assuming you're not talking about the kind of "bro I got in a killer workout yesterday, my biceps are still sore" Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness humblebragging:
I have a controlled autoimmune disorder like arthritis that causes me some joint pain. But it basically goes away if I do regular strength training. If you do strength training or any sport long enough you'll eventually hurt yourself. Usually that's just a pulled muscle because you woke up on the wrong side of the bed and it goes away after a few days. These micro-injuries actually seem to happen to me a lot, probably because of my condition I'm just prone to this stuff. But I prefer it to the pains of inactivity.
Even for people without arthritis, you have a question to answer: which would you rather suffer from? The pains from not working, out like having a weak core and bad posture and the discomfort of being unable to climb a few sets of stairs? Or the pains from working out, like pulling a back muscle because you didn't warm up or some shin or knee pain from too much running?
The answer is obvious to me. You're going to get hurt either way. I'll go with the path that makes me feel better, live longer, look hotter, and is a rewarding challenge.
From personal experience strength training has been key to recovering from injuries (caused by doing stupid things, not exercise itself). So maybe the correlation between exercise and pain is incorrect? The exercise is the cure to the pain...
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-5753318/v1 (pre-print) seems to provide a strong argument for strength training being beneficial. My search was not thorough so likely more studies out there.
Anecdotally, weight training eliminated my chronic shoulder and hip pains from sitting at a desk. I’ve read several similar stories but I’d be interested to see studies on this.
For me personally: My fitness routines are regular but sloppy.
I’m often complaining about soreness here, a lightly pulled there, a big joint that needs to be left alone for a few days. It’s annoying but also even kinda satisfying, and I know how to avoid serious injury.
I’m not complaining about lower back pain because my fitness activity has rid me of it. That pain would have stopped me from being able to move easily, work on my cabin, play with children, and would have eventually made me overweight and chronically ill.
The tradeoff is really a no-brainer in my case, and I don’t think my case is so unique.
Most of those are not actually complaining but bragging.
Sore muscles -> good workout.
Physical activity triggers the production of endorphins, specifically beta-endorphins, which are natural painkillers.
Every life long runner I know has had a serious knee problem or other injury.
But I think running is higher impact on the body that a lot of of other exercise. You're putting your full body weight on a small area several times a second for many minutes every day.
If that's what you're doing, you're not running correctly. Keep your knees bent so that the shock goes up to your gluts and hips.
I'm not talking about myself and I haven't evaluated the running form of the people I know.
But impact is just force and time and the high pressure is because contact is being made with your foot, which has a small surface area.
You can find hammers that absorb shocks better than others, but ultimately it's driving the nail because of impact and pressure. (Small hammer head striking quickly).
I don't doubt that proper form, correct training, and other interventions can reduce running injuries. But they're the most frequent exercise injuries I've seen personally and they also appear common statistically.
(Of course running is more accessible than, say, jai alai so base rates are higher anyway)
In my case, it's "good" pain. If you exercise regularly, you're going to be sore a lot of the time, but you grow to like it. It's a reminder that you worked hard and not really debilitating.
Some people just like to complain? Or at least make it clear they are working out to everyone around them? Or they are working out too hard for their fitness level? Lots of reasons.
You don't know you have problems with X if you aren't using X.
If you do nothing for 20 years and then go for a 20km walk - you'll be in pain. But it's the 20 years that caused it, not the 20 km.
Sure, but is the sum of that single day of pain more than the sum of 20 years of pain?
It's not 20 years of pain though
https://youtu.be/_fbCcWyYthQ?feature=shared
If folks are regularly sore and their goals are not some lofty races or even higher and further down the progression path, they are doing it wrong.
You should feel the exercise and specific muscles afterwards, sometimes even a day after (like hamstrings and thighs from squats, those don't get much workout during normal life), but after initial beginner phase the continuous long term goal is to get enough workout that muscles are not sore, just notch below. Properly sore muscle needs few days rest, a well used one can be again fully loaded in 48h easily.
And overall definitely less pain or more like 0 pain, ie back from weak core is pretty typical. Another one are knees, but to train knees around some already-damaged tissues is more tricky, but definitely worth it.
After starting weightlifting (on top of some sports like ski touring, climbing, hiking etc) I can handle much more, heavier and longer. Need to move your/friend stuff to another apartment? All day carrying with them feels like mild stretch, compared to them complaining for back pain for another 3 days.