This section will discuss pain, muscle soreness, joint pain in relation to weight training.
Pain can be technically good or bad when discussed in the context of weight training, the pain can be a soreness relating to muscular tearing at the cellular level (Micro trauma) or can be a nerve/joint pain depending on the technique and weight load you use.
Joint and nerve pain is very bad, and should prompt you to see a Doctor whereas muscle soreness is usually what people refer to when they say "no pain no gain".
Before I explain the differences in what can cause muscle pain and how it can be good or bad, reduced or enhanced, the most important thing is being able to differentiate muscular and joint/nerve pain.
Joint and nerve pain-
Is most commonly felt in certain movements and often when a weight is being applied, it is nearly always very sharp in characteristic and feels like a "stabbing" sort of pain, which can lead to immediately wanting to stop the movement. The most common sites for this sort of pain are the elbows and the shoulders, and in people who use very heavy weights for their legs the knee can be a problem.
An elbow pain is usually associated with the elbow joint or Triceps muscle disturbing the Ulnar nerve.
if you have any kind of condition which affects your bones such as deficiencies in calcium, vitamin D or a condition such as Arthritis then it is more probable that you have a problem with the actual bones forming the elbow joint as you can get growths or wearing away of bone which can disturb the bone itself or the nerves around it.
When discussing elbow bone/joint pain it is important to note that there can be 2 types, for this to make sense it is important to give you an image of how I will be describing the arm, all the following explanations will be given with the understanding that you are looking at your left arm, with the palm facing upwards, so you little finger is towards your chest and your thumb is facing away from the body.
The reason it is important to position your arm like this when thinking of pain will be relevant further on.
Bone pain will feel sharp and will feel like a sharp stabbing sensation into your elbow grooves.
There are 2 grooves, most people know about one of them as the funny bone area.
1) Commonly people know of the "funny bone" region, this area is called the medial epicondyle, inflammation and swelling of this area is hence referred to as “Medial Epicondylitis” and this is most commonly associated with golf, and so is known as "golfers elbow". People get golfers elbow due to over-straightening (overextension) of the arm during the motion of swinging in golf. In weight training triceps exercises as well as chest exercises cause extension of the arm and sometimes when using an incorrect technique for a long period of time or making sudden harsh drastic movements you can cause damage to this area.
The problem with golfers elbow is it can VERY quickly damage the nerve that runs in the area called the Ulnar nerve, and if untreated can be a longstanding problem.
The inflamed nerve can become permanently inflamed if left untreated as extending the arm is a daily task for most never allowing the inflammation to settle. This eventually leads to jolty or "electric shock" like feelings which travel all the way down to the little finger every time the arm is extended.
2) The other groove is on the other side of the elbow away from your body, this is called the lateral epicondyle. Whereas in golfers elbow damage to the nerve and overextension of the arm and straightening the arm while holding weights leads to problems, in the lateral epicondyle it’s slightly different.
There is no major nerve that runs through this groove and so it can present as pain specifically in the elbow region without radiating down the arm, and so can be misdiagnosed as general bone pain due to Arthritis.
The pain is however in fact due to the arm being rotated too quickly and too strongly, and so most commonly this type of pain presents in people that play racket sports such as badminton or tennis, earning it the name "tennis elbow" (and they always told you sports were good at school....).
Tennis elbow (aka lateral Epicondylitis) is due to inflammation and damage to a ligament which is normally responsible for the motions of moving your arm downwards (when you palm is facing down) with your elbow fixed in position or moving your arm from left to right without moving your elbow (while your thumb is facing the ceiling), by moving your arm in this manner it can be understood very quickly why racket sports cause this injury.
These nerve and tendon injuries always occur on exertion to begin with, occur suddenly on certain specific movements and are very SHARP STABBING like pains.
So now you should have a vague idea or whether or not the pain at the elbow is a joint/nerve pain by thinking about when it occurs, what are you doing at the time it occurs, where specifically does it occur, whether or not it radiates down to the arm, and if it is stabbing or electric shock like. Hopefully you will then go see a doctor who will help you take care of it. If left for a long time the harmful stimuli may be repeatedly applied to the area and the pain could become permanent.
Similar things occur at the shoulders and knee, for similar reasons such as incorrect movements and overextension of joints, which will lead to inflammation of certain ligaments or nerves.
In summary electric shock like pains and stabbing pains are a problem and you go see a doctor.
Next we will talk about muscle pains.
Muscle Pain
Muscle pains will nearly always occur 1-2 days AFTER the workout and so is referred to as "Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness" or DOMS, or less technically "muscle fever".
This soreness is different to the pain you may feel immediately after a workout. People used to say that DOMS were due to lactic acid build up, which is produced when you do a lot of strenuous exercise and to some extent that could be true.
However it has been established that it is not the muscle contracting i.e. lifting the heavy weight that causes the pain but rather resisting the heavy weight which produces tears in the muscle fibres and so causes pain when being used a day later.
How to tear muscle for it to build
To aid the understanding of how to create tears in the muscle do the following, stand straight and have your left palm facing in front of you with your arm by your side, now imagine you are holding a weight and are about to perform a bicep curl to target your bicep muscle.
Fix your elbow at your waist and do not move it from this position, now raise your arm while keeping your elbow steady, until your arm reaches approximately your chest level.
This should give a cramping like or familiar sensation in your arm if you are accustomed to working your biceps muscle, and this is standard muscle isolation in an attempt to make the muscle look “big”. However what makes a muscle grow in the long run is not the contraction but rather the eccentric movement which causes tearing, this is the motion of keeping the elbow locked and now very slowly bringing your arm down to your side in the starting position. If at this point you have thought “Ahhh that’s why my arm feels tense after a workout, but doesn’t really grow overall”, then congratulations you have understood a basic error in the mechanics of most peoples workout routines. This slow relaxation of the muscles while the muscles are under strain forces them to tear, and this is also why sit ups are more effective on a ball rather than on the floor because it is one thing to contract your abs but it is another to tear them during relaxation, for which you need over 180 degrees of motion available.
Truth behind DOMS
DOMS usually indicates that you have achieved muscle tearing, and so people sometimes judge their workout on how much pain they feel the day after the workout. However many people think of DOMS as a problem and want to find ways to ease the pain.
Most commonly people after a few months of training no longer feel the DOMS and begin to think they have reached a plateau and start doing drastic amounts of weight training to achieve the DOMS again, this is where it becomes a problem.
When thinking of the DOMS it is not possible to assess your workout only based on this one measure, multiple things need to be considered and taken into account:
1) Firstly do you eat well?
Having a poor diet means that you body is unable to heal properly and so you have a "prolonged DOMS" which can last up to a week.
2) Secondly are you exercising after a long pause in training?
Exercising is actually unnatural for the body if you do not regularly do sports as you joints and muscle are only used to being used within the range of walking, standing, lying and sitting. Starting new movements in parts of the body against resistance will of course create immediate tears and so you will have immense DOMS the few weeks of weight training.
3) What changes have you made?
People will never have 1 fixed routine from the start of their training till the end, information will be gained throughout, supplements may be removed or added, diet may improve or worsen and all these factors can contribute to DOMS.
For example taking Creatine will increase your strength and so you will lift more and cause larger tearing than if you stopped taking it and so your sensation of DOMS will be greater when you consume Creatine than when you do not.
Improving the quality or protein. You may have started to consume better protein from food or supplements and this could aid the speed of your muscle recovery and so your DOMS may now be reduced to 1 day from 3 days in duration or perhaps that soreness you had for 1 day no longer occurs.
Taking Glutamine. In my own experience and in that of my friends, even when increasing our strength and lifting heavier weights the DOMS seems to be significantly reduced when taking Glutamine, and it is only natural because its function is to repair and maintain muscle!!!
Are you still lifting the same after 1 month of training? If you have been weight lifting for a month or more you should be seeing an improvement in strength and ability which should prompt you to lift a heavier weight, if you are not doing this then your muscle has simply gotten stronger, and although you are fatiguing the muscle you are unable to now tear the fibres because the weight is no longer heavy enough. So to remedy this you should increase your reps, slow down your reps, or increase the weight.
I hope this section has been useful and welcome any feedback or questions.
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