♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ The two most famous physical therapists ♪
♪ On the internet ♪
- Hello, Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Hi, I'm Chris the Pharmacist.
- That's right.
Ah, and I am exactly one half
of the Bob and Brad PT channel.
However, today Bob is not here,
but we're absolutely honored to have Chris here.
He's done some wonderful research
and we both have some extraordinary history of sore muscles.
(Chris laughing)
So the title today is how to relieve sore muscles,
including DOMS, D O M S.
That means Delayed
- [Both] Onset Muscle Soreness.
- That's when you work out on Saturday,
but you don't feel the sore muscles until-
- Sunday or Monday.
(Chris laughing)
- Oftentimes it skips a day and it's in the Monday,
it's delayed.
And it's an interesting concept,
but we're gonna, actually, Chris is gonna go
through this in detail.
We're gonna give you some health information,
how you can avoid the sore muscles.
So as you know, we do have a giveaway.
- Yep.
- Go ahead, tell 'em, Chris.
- It's SleepOvation, Brad.
- It's a mattress and they-
- One of the best in the business.
- Excellent mattress, great for pain.
If you just wanna sleep all night long
'cause I have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning
'cause I'm literally so comfortable
with my spondylosis, I can't even say it,
spondylolisthesis back pain.
Great giveaway.
Go to bobandbrad.com, go to the giveaway section,
you can get it there, or go to Facebook and it's pinned
to the top of the page.
Let's get on.
Sore muscles, active.
Oh, I've already given away one of the secrets.
Let's go, let's give it to Chris, this is-
- Well, like we said in the title,
DOMS, Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, not fun.
And no one is immune.
It doesn't matter if you're the novice,
the average guy that exercise on a consistent basis
or the elite of the elite athletes.
We are all subject to becoming a victim of it
at some point in our lives with workout programs.
- That's kind of strong, Chris.
A victim?
- Well, it's painful.
- Yeah.
- I mean, it hurts.
I mean, at some point, if you're sore, you kinda feel
like you've been victimized.
- I'm just-
- You know you're gonna pay the piper at some point
or another. (Brad laughing)
I'm gonna actually pay for it tomorrow
with what I did this morning. - Okay.
- But it's one of those things where, is it bad, is it good.
And when it's been kind of a debated question
and when you consider that with athletes,
you've got trillions of dollars invested in these athletes
all around the world between Olympic athletes
and pro athletes and college athletes.
But we don't really have any clear answers as
to how do we solve the mystery of DOMS.
And so it's something that, you know,
the true remedy is time.
- Okay.
- But there's aspects of it that we can help to try
and minimize it and hopefully make it not quite so severe.
But at the same time, we always wanna, you know,
we kinda have a guideline, so what is it?
Well, it's the pain that you get.
It's not the pain that you get when you're working out,
you know, that's more fatigue of the muscle,
maybe some muscle soreness.
That goes away after you've been exercising.
So if you've been doing squats and your muscles are burning,
but as soon as you stop doing squats and you walk away,
go drink some water, do some stretching, that's gone.
- Right.
- It's not that type of pain.
This is the pain that shows up, actually,
one to two days later. - Sure.
- Most often, like you said, it skips a day.
- Yeah.
- So it's, you know, it's usually days,
it's usually days three, four and five are usually the range
for most people.
Most of us when you're well conditioned,
about 72 hours is the window, it seems to go away,
but not everybody, it can go up to five days.
If it goes beyond five days,
or if you have more severe pain,
we'll, just kind of do a quick,
make sure you check with your doctor here kind of thing.
So if you have pain that's extreme in nature
where you can barely walk upstairs, it is excruciating.
If you are hydrating well and you have dark urine,
these are the- - Ah.
- So this is a sign where you've got
some serious muscle toxicity going on
and you do wanna report that to your doctor.
- Sure.
- It could actually be very serious.
And actually some of those occur like in basic training
where a lot of newbie military members
that may have not been training so hard,
they go all gung-ho and they get-
- Day after day after day.
- They hammer into basic training
and they have very clear, the US military
and I'm sure other military show quite examples
of how in fact you can end up with DOMS
and/or something more serious.
- For the average person, pretty-
- Pretty unlikely.
- Unless you're doing some really,
you've gotta give your body a break.
When you're sore, and that's what we're gonna talk about.
- Yeah, well, that's what we're gonna talk about.
So I mean, there's exercises that can be used
to induce DOMS.
And so a lot of researchers are gravitating towards that,
but it's funny that we really have,
and we'll talk about maybe some light at the end
of the tunnel where I think they might be getting
a better handle on this.
So we'll talk about that towards the end.
So what do we know?
We work out, it usually happens.
You know, there's basically an eccentric contraction
is usually when it's the efficient contraction.
So it's like, if you're doing a curl, that's the exercise
when you're going down, your muscles getting longer,
or if you're doing a squat, it's on the way down,
your muscles are getting longer or running down a hill
or even going down in a pushup.
So those are all examples of eccentric contractions.
- Right.
- And then if you're going up,
that's the concentric contraction,
that's the one that seems harder, but it's not.
(both laughing)
So that's where the damage gets done.
And again, it's not happening at the time,
it's just gonna show up later.
And so you get this pain, you're like,
"Wow, I'm tender, I'm sore."
You lose range of motion. - Yeah.
- So what do you do?
Well, I think one of the best things
is just gentle exercise.
We talked about cross training, we were kind of breaking
this down the other day.
So I mean, there's a variety of different things you can do,
but something like walking, biking, swimming,
gentle stretching, you know,
I think there's all things
that'll be certainly physical things that you can do.
- So if you're starting a running program,
you haven't done anything and you ran two miles,
you felt pretty good.
It's like, yeah.
But then all of a sudden, all this muscle soreness,
up and downstairs, all this pain.
Now, what I do, I still get this
because I'm always pushing the limit a little bit.
- Yep.
- Especially if I'm training for a race.
I'll run one day, I'm sore the next day,
I'll go for a two mile walk.
- Yep.
- And that's it.
- Yeah.
And I think that in a walk I think is one
of the simplest ways to help to relieve.
It's an active recovery.
Now, the relief is temporary.
I mean, I'm sure you've remembered after you've taken
that walk, you feel pretty good during the walk
and even shortly thereafter, but you go and sit down
and maybe, you know, a good protein meal
and maybe get some fruits and veggies in ya.
- Sure.
- Which is actually, nutrition is very important with this,
gonna touch on that a little bit.
And hydration, but also you stand up from the table
and you're like, ooh-
- Not gone yet. - Tender again.
It's not going yet.
So it is temporary, it's time,
but your body will go through it.
And your body adapts to that, so that eventually
when you repeat said workout, say, day five,
'cause you want to give your body some time to heal.
- Yep.
- It's gonna be repeatable
and you're gonna come back stronger.
- So the next time you run that same distance,
you won't be near as sore.
- Near as sore, it's gonna be a little easier.
And it's how we become adaptable to training.
That's why whether you're the novice,
whether you're professional, everything becomes adaptable,
and that's where progress is made.
So from a development standpoint.
Other things that we've found,
what else can you do after a workout?
Immediately after, one of the studies suggests actually heat
right on the muscles right away.
- Ah!
- Yeah, so they took a whole bunch of people
that were actually in really good shape.
They took elite hockey players
and they had them doing squats to induce DOMS.
And basically they found in one group
that they would actually apply heat wraps,
so something like ThermaCare,
which is about 104 degrees.
So it sounds pretty hot, but-
- A hot pack.
- Hot pack.
So, but, you know, keep it in mind,
after you've just done intense exercise,
last thing we find comfortable is applying heat
to ourselves.
But if you can do heat and gentle stretching right after,
they've found that it helps with the blood movement
in and out of the muscle. - Yep.
- And also that flexibility because you've created
all these little micro tears.
It just kinda helps to lengthen those muscles
and help with the healing process.
And you'll still have the DOMS pain the next day,
but it won't be as intense, which allows you to get back
into your workouts more aggressively, more soon.
But at the same time when we're experiencing DOMS,
wanna make sure that we're not, if you just did the run,
all of a sudden it's day two or three
and you're feeling miserable, don't do something intense,
do something gradual.
- Listen to your body.
- Yeah, very, very important with that.
- If you had a hot tub at your house,
you could use that for heat.
- Hot tub, yeah.
- That would be a little more fun.
- Exactly, that's way more fun.
For a variety of different reasons,
but this is a family show.
(Brad laughing)
But that said, yeah,
that will definitely help you.
So, and actually, and so people have all said,
well, what about cold?
Well, that was an interesting aspect of the study.
They said, you know, cold in a lot of cases-
- A cold pack.
- Cold pack will relieve pain
because it deadens the nerve endings,
so it seems to work pretty well.
But it didn't actually seem to improve
or speed up the healing with DOMS,
which I thought was kind of interesting.
But if it feels better, I say do it, because I mean,
the reality of it, it's your comfort level.
And if it helps you feel a little bit better.
And you've had excellent experience with ice.
I mean, it's one of your primary recommendations.
- Yeah, I'm slowly changing, and it may vary too,
but for this, you know, for people who are exercising,
you get soreness, I really encourage you
to having experienced it before,
because you just are starting a program.
Get through it, it's gonna get better.
Use some of these, you know,
if you ran and you got sore from running,
well, maybe ride your bike the next day.
Very gently, very gently. - Yep.
- And that's the hard part.
If you've got that.
- I'm gonna get into this thing.
- Attitude, you got no pain, no gain.
That's the hardest thing on DOMS.
People have to learn to relax and just-
- Well, and that's one of the things too.
A lot of trainers also emphasize
that it's not so much the no pain no gain anymore.
I mean, you can still get excellent muscle development
without hurting yourself. - Sure.
- And that's something to take home.
And actually starting a program to minimize DOMS.
I mean, you're gonna wanna warm up,
you wanna start gradually.
We don't go to the intense stuff right away.
We're not jumping off that cliff.
- Right.
- We're gonna warm up to this thing
so that we can gradually improve as we get in there.
- Right.
- A couple other things that seem
to give some decent relief.
Foam roller.
So I don't know if we've got one sitting around.
- Right behind me.
Just keep talking, I'll get it.
- So the foam roller is a really nice tool
so far as trying to help to move fluids.
So you can kind of roll that out, then basically, Brad,
you can probably show it just a couple of techniques
to maybe improve things.
- Sure.
- Let me move my mug.
- Yeah, you're gonna do this on the floor,
not on a bed or a soft surface, but for demonstration.
If I had sore calves, I would roll back and forth like this,
and then I would turn sideways to get that aspect
of the muscle.
- Yeah, 'cause it's gonna get that connective tissue
and the other muscle fibers.
It's moving fluid.
- Yeah.
I could go like this, but I'm probably not going to,
'cause remember, we don't wanna get too aggressive.
So I'm gonna use, this puts all the weight on one,
this divides the weight up between both.
And I'm just gonna go like this.
And you're gonna do this for 30 seconds or a minute
and just get some, get that blood flow
and that circulation improves
so that those muscles can heal.
And you know, you can do this on your hamstrings.
You can roll pretty much anything in your body.
- Yep.
- Some arms and traps and lats are difficult,
but legs are good.
What are you looking for?
- I'm looking for my ball.
- Oh yes, a tennis ball.
- Yeah.
- Or this one?
- Yeah, this guy.
All right, these things are actually genius,
and this one's pretty fancy 'cause it lights up.
I think Brad said you found it at the dollar store.
- [Brad] Cost a dollar.
- But, yeah.
So if you were working your biceps,
here's a very simple way, you can just kind of get
some decent circulation to the area.
Little pressure on it, kinda get that fluid moving.
And so it works pretty well.
And these little fingers actually kinda dig
in a little bit. - Yes.
- So it kind of works out pretty well,
but a tennis ball works great as well,
there's a little compression with that.
So you can definitely, you know, you can use your forearms
if you're doing hamstring, quad.
So these types of things, totally inexpensive,
you can travel with it. - All right.
- So if you were doing a race and right afterwards
you wanna just try and get a little bit of massage
into those muscles. - Yep.
- These work phenomenally well.
- Yeah, so if you're traveling, you're in a hotel,
you'd done your event, jump in the hot tub,
get your little fancy ball, your tennis ball.
You know, if you happen to have a massage gun,
they work great too,
but you're not gonna get real aggressive with it.
- No, you gotta keep it on those low settings,
'cause if you get overly aggressive.
And that's the same thing with like massage too,
we have to be careful, like a deep massage,
I've actually shown that I can actually create DOMS.
(Brad laughing)
So you wanna be real careful with that.
But on a low setting, these are a little bit more expensive,
so we favor the cheap on this show.
- Right.
- And I think these work great,
but those work excellent too.
And so if you can give yourself just about three
or four minutes of treatment, I think you will find it'll go
a long way to helping those muscles heal
a little bit quicker and minimizing that painful interval.
- I do wanna mention a really nice way to work these
so they're not so aggressive, is you put the round head
on it, like this has, or like this one.
And instead of taking it straight into the muscle,
which it's a lot more aggressive, you turn it sideways
and you get a very gentle and it spreads out the massage
to a larger area.
It's a really nice alternative.
'Cause some people may already have these.
- Sure.
- I wouldn't buy one just for DOMS.
- No.
- Unless you want to, you can use them for all kinds of-
- Well, you can use them for a variety of recovery.
- I mean, your whole family uses.
(Brad laughing)
- We use them all the time.
- Yeah.
- Critical for recovery, in my opinion.
- Yep.
So anyways, there we go with that.
Was there another one, Chris?
- Well, I guess we were talking about cold beer.
(both laughing)
- Well, I was just having fun
when I was writing my notes down.
(Brad laughing)
- I would tend to say that-
- I thought you said that
if you get a dark beer like Guinness,
there are some properties in it.
- Actually, Guinness has some properties actually.
And they actually did a medical study,
probably in the early two thousands that shows-
- I knew there were some medical support.
- Actually, the flavonoids in beer,
and actually coffees have the same type because it's dark,
basically help to improve, they're free radicals,
so they help improve circulation.
So believe it or not, a dark beer is probably something,
or even a red wine or even grape juice for people
that don't want alcohol.
- That's right.
- 'Cause alcohol can dehydrate.
(Brad laughing)
But it's one of those things
that might help out a little bit.
- But you know, we're from Wisconsin,
it's just part of the culture.
- Beer is in our DNA.
(Brad laughing)
But you know, the other interesting thing,
like I said early in the video is that, you know,
they're doing lots of research on these and they're finding
that there's other things that may be more,
they're actually finding that DOMS might be more
of something that might be due more to connective tissue
and fascia tissue. - Ah, yes!
- So there's an interesting book that you alluded to
when we were talking about this pre-production
and also with respect to a couple of new articles
that came out in September of this year
and October of this year in PubMed, actually are showing
that maybe that connective tissue has much more
of the nerve firing and maybe causing that discomfort.
- I can't remember the title of that video,
but I did it and I read the book.
This woman, I believe she's from the UK,
and she's dedicated her life basically to working
with the fascia and pain relief through fascia.
So yeah, and now they're studying it more.
So that we could actually get to do another video on.
- I think so, because I think there's gonna be a pile of,
I mean, it's kind of the tip of the iceberg, I think.
And you know, even though we don't fully understand it,
so the takeaways I think are really,
if you're new to exercise, start gradual.
- Yes.
- Warm up before you get started
and then ramp up the intensity as time goes by
and your fitness level gains.
- Sure.
- So just don't all gung-ho right away.
- If you're 50 years old, you may take two weeks
before you ramp up to a level, so you avoid that pain
versus going into a class and getting hurt easy,
and then you can't walk the next day.
- Slow and steady wins the race, I think.
So many times that I think, you know, it's like,
I think we all are naturally driven to try and do our best.
And so, we gotta get in there and work it out
for a great sweat, but if we ease our way into it
and cool down afterwards, it's very important.
And then either using the massage, the foam roller,
the guns, the hydration and eating well.
So you're gonna wanna get some protein in your diet.
You're gonna wanna have fruits and veggies
to get those flavonoids, to help circulatory issues
and natural anti-inflammatory aspects.
I guess I didn't touch on the NSAIDs.
So ibuprofen and naproxen are over the counter
pain relievers that might give you a little bit of relief,
but the jury is now on that saying
that, yeah, you get some of that pain relief,
but it doesn't solve DOMS,
it's not gonna make you heal quicker.
And might be counterproductive
because the inflammatory factors that happen
from muscle breakdown are what's helping
with muscle development. - Ah!
- So if we take an anti-inflammatory,
we could be slowing down our progress.
So maybe some of the pain rubs like Bengay
or a capsaicin containing thing, like maybe Tiger Balm,
for instance. - Sure.
- May be better for topical analgesic relief.
- Right.
- More so than the anti-inflammatories,
coupled with the massage, the hydration, resting,
active rest, meaning taking a walk rather than a run
or swimming or biking.
- Right.
- So those I think are some of the keys
that are gonna help us to minimize DOMES
and hopefully keep us more successful,
more effective and getting out there and doing more.
- Absolutely.
Stay healthy, active and pain-free,
and keep the DOMS away from you.
Thanks for helping us, Chris.
- Thanks, guys.
(gentle music)