I working out.
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Thread Topic: I working out.
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There are some unexpected side effects that can come along with starting a new workout routine—and I don't just mean stronger muscles and improved endurance. Maybe your arms are so tired one day you can hardly lift a blow dryer, you're suddenly sleeping like a baby, and you mysteriously never have clean socks.
I’ve been there—more than once. For years, I was a “yo-yo” exerciser. I’d stay committed for anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple months, only to let life get in the way. Months later, I'd come back to my workouts. My breaks were long enough that my body (and my mind) seemed to go through the reacclimation process every time.
After years of going back and forth, I started to notice a pattern with some of the incredible side effects of working out, though. Moving apartments felt way breezier when I could confidently haul my boxes up three stories of stairs after a summer of light strength training (as opposed to the previous year, when I hadn’t worked out in a while and was totally exhausted by a quick move). And I’ll never forget how good it felt the first time I walked out of a kickboxing class thinking, that was hard, but I still nailed it.
That said, there’s a lot to get used to when you start working out—the amazing, the annoying, and the surprising. And you'll probably wonder, is all this normal? Fret not. It can take some time to adjust to the effects of working out. Some will fade away as your body gets used to exercise, and some awesome benefits will stick around, too. (They’re what keep me coming back, after all.)
Here are eight totally normally things you might notice when you start working out. Knowing what to expect can help you stay on track when they pop up—no need to worry that something’s wrong, or it’s “not working” for you. Give it time, and let the positive effects motivate you to keep going.
That said, there’s a lot to get used to when you start working out—the amazing, the annoying, and the surprising. And you'll probably wonder, is all this normal? Fret not. It can take some time to adjust to the effects of working out. Some will fade away as your body gets used to exercise, and some awesome benefits will stick around, too. (They’re what keep me coming back, after all.)
Here are eight totally normally things you might notice when you start working out. Knowing what to expect can help you stay on track when they pop up—no need to worry that something’s wrong, or it’s “not working” for you. Give it time, and let the positive effects motivate you to keep going.
1. you will probably feel sore
When you work your muscles, you actually create little tears in your muscle fibers, and it's the rebuilding process that makes them stronger. However, this recovery can leave you feeling achy and sore. "This often occurs not one, but two days after a strength training session," explains exercise physiologist Tom Holland, M.S. C.S.C.S, Bowflex fitness advisor and author of Beat the Gym. The achiness that comes on two or three days after a hard workout is known as delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS.
While soreness can happen to anyone who does a workout their muscles aren't used to (even seasoned gym-goers), it can feel particularly jarring when your body is totally new to exercise.
When you’re new, “your nervous system hasn’t become efficient in recruiting various muscles,” explains exercise physiologist Joel Seedman, PhD, owner of Advanced Human Performance in Atlanta. “Your body doesn't quite know how to fire everything properly, and you [don’t have as much] motor control.” Your body inherently learns how to move more efficiently as you keep training, he says, but in the beginning, over-stressing and under-stressing certain muscles can lead to more soreness. Fortunately, your nervous system adapts very quickly, so this type of soreness should subside within a couple of weeks.
Plus, there’s something called the "repeated bout effect" at play, explains Seedman. The first time your body is exposed to a certain workout (particularly ones that include a lot of eccentric movements, which is the “lowering” part of an exercise), you often end up sore as your body recovers and adapts your muscles to protect them for the next time around. Research shows that after even just one bout, you’ll probably be less sore the second or third time you do a particular workout. There are several hypotheses for why the repeated bout effect happens, including neural changes, muscle cell adaptation, and the body's response to inflammation, but the process still isn't fully understood.
To minimize the discomfort, it's important to ease into a routine, explains Cori Lefkowith, C.P.T., Orange County-based personal trainer and founder of Redefining Strength. "When most people start a new workout routine, they jump in 100 percent, and they end up so sore they can't work out the rest of the week," she says. This makes it tough to establish a consistent routine (and overdoing it also leaves you more prone to injury—if your pain is sharp or lasts more than a few days, check in with a medical professional). There’s no hard and fast rule for how much you should work out when you get started, says Lefkowith, but if you’re working out so often that you’re too sore to continue, that’s a sign you should back off, she says. Maybe that’s only quick 15-minute workouts three days a week, she says—you can always add on.
Even if you do start slow, though, you'll still probably experience some soreness as your body gets used to the (good) stress from exercise. "The good news is that you'll feel less sore the more you exercise, so hang in there and trust that your body will eventually adapt," says Jennifer Leah Gottlieb, C.P.T., founder of JLG Fitness. In the meantime, you can try gentle stretching, light activity (like walking), and using heat or ice to soothe sore muscles. Research isn’t conclusive on whether heat or ice is better for sore muscles, and truthfully, neither of them make much of a difference in the actual muscle recovery—but they can help you feel better while you wait. Try both and see what feels good to you, or switch back and forth between them. (Here are 9 ways to deal when you're more sore than usual.)
2. You might notice your energy levels increase over time.
When you first start working out, it might seem like your new sweat sessions are zapping your energy, says Gottlieb. That's normal since your body isn't used to spending so much energy every day. After a while, though, working out has been shown to have the opposite effect. "Your body may take some time to adjust to the new activity level, but once it does you should start to actually feel more energized after your workouts," says Gottlieb.
To throw it back to middle school science class, “as you start exercising, you start building more mitochondria and more capillary density in your muscles,” explains Seedman. “Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, and they’re responsible for helping us produce more energy (or ATP). Those capillaries are important for oxygen distribution and delivery to our bodies,” he says. This can all add up to a little more pep in your step once your body starts building these up.
Research backs this up. One study, published in PLOS One, involved nearly 100 college students who reported feeling fatigued and burned out. Half of the participants were instructed to run three times a week for six weeks; the other group was told not to change their workout habits. At the end of the study, the running group reported less overall fatigue than the control group.
A review of 16 studies involving more than 670 people also concluded that, on average, one exercise session significantly improves energy levels following the workout. It’s worth noting that most of the studies included in the analysis looked at moderate- -
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Idc if this was copied and pasted that was actually really interesting after I sat down and read through it wow thanks
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