Soreness – or – Pain?

By Deborah Vogel

What is Pain?

Pain is a complicated process in which our nervous system communicates important information to us. Pain warns us to pay attention to our bodies. It tells us that we are in danger of damaging or hurting ourselves, such as when we get too close to a hot burner on the stove. Pain can be acute or chronic. It is a subjective experience.

Acute pain typically gets our immediate attention, like the dancer who comes down from a leap incorrectly and sprains his/her ankle. The dancer KNOWS that his/her ankle is injured, and their body’s response is one of protection – don’t even try to walk. Thus, acute pain is easy to define (pain that is extremely sharp or severe). Chronic pain can be more challenging to define and to separate from soreness – especially for many athletes, as they appear to have a higher pain tolerance than much of the general population.

When I listen to a client describe what he/she is feeling, I remind myself that sensation is relative information. For example, if one has been out in the snow, room temperature tap water will feel hot, but if one has just been out in a hot bath, that same tap water will feel cool. We all have different relationships with our bodies. Some people are more acutely aware of small changes and know when something is wrong in their bodies; while others will have their muscles go into spasm before they notice a change in how they feel.

Improving our ability to listen and respond to messages, such as pain, from our bodies is important to being able to maintain long-term health. It is also important to remember that these responses, which influence how we experience pain, are emotional as well as physical. An example of an emotional influence would be an athlete who is concerned about being put on the bench during a game that scouts are going to attend.  He or she may downplay or deny any pain in order to get to play. Looking at the many physical and emotional influences upon pain helps to explain why two people could have greatly varying responses to the same injury.

There can be a fine line between soreness and pain. More often than not, I see clients NOT paying attention to their messages of pain or allowing the initial messages of soreness to become pain. Seeing how hard it is to define pain, let’s go to the easier task of defining situations that may create soreness.

What is Soreness?

Athletes often will feel temporary muscle soreness after a workout that has been particularly challenging or when a new skill set has been introduced.  This soreness is often the result of overworking muscles without the proper warm-up for that particular movement pattern.

We all have unique bodies – some people have good flexibility but not as much strength while others may be muscularly really strong, but not be balanced with appropriate flexibility.  Remember – good muscle tone means a muscle is both strong and flexible and appropriately responsive to stressors.

Depending on your individual body type and structure, some movements will suit you better and feel natural, while other movements challenge your physicality. For example, I have a dance background and have normal flexibility and strength. Many years ago I was in a piece that was choreographed by a dancer who was little, wiry, and fast moving. The piece was filled with small precise, fast movements that weren’t a part of my dance vocabulary (think of a robot gone crazy). The day after our first rehearsal I woke up to incredible muscle soreness in my upper body.  My body hadn’t been conditioned for that type of muscle patterning.

Sometimes you will feel soreness begin during a workout. This soreness may be caused by fatigue of doing too many repetitions of a specific movement. If at all possible, when you feel the soreness begin, try to take a few minutes and rest or try to stretch the involved area if you have been strongly contracting it. Your body is giving you a clue that if soreness is respected in its early stages, you can prevent more damaging muscle strain from occurring.

You may feel muscle strain the day after a workout, usually upon awakening. What you are actually feeling are small tears in the muscles and connective tissue caused by overly forceful stretching, movements that you are not accustomed to, or a combination of the two. Generally, you’ll feel stiff, achy, and uncomfortable as you begin to move and stretch. Typically these sensations will ease as you continue to wake up and move. It may take a few days for the soreness to decrease, depending on how much you overworked the muscles.

Growing Stronger

A muscle grows stronger when it is gently stressed beyond its normal workload. If a dancer takes the whole summer off from training and then in September immediately returns to several hours of classes per day – that is an example of aggressively overloading of the muscle. This soreness may take several days to disappear, depending on the dancer’s quality of body care. The best way to minimize soreness and pain is to maximize training. The following guidelines will help to minimize and work through soreness as quickly as possible:

1. Proper nutrition is essential for the body to repair itself easily and quickly, even from small muscle tears. Protein and good carbohydrates (such as vegetables) should be well represented in the diet. Grains and sweets should be minimized.

2. Proper hydration is important. A general rule for hydration is to drink one quart of water daily for every 50 pounds of body weight. This does not mean soda, juice, coffee, tea, or sports drinks. The body can only utilize about a cup of water an hour, and will flush the rest through the kidneys. Sipping water, all day long, is the best way to stay properly hydrated. Generally, thirst means dehydration.

3. Warm up muscles with movement, such as brisk walking, easy jogging, or marching in place. Warm yourself up dynamically by swinging your leg forward and lowering into a runners lunge.  The goal should be to increase circulation and begin to wake the body up neurologically.

With practice you will learn to decipher the body’s messages as either soreness or pain. Whether you are a casual athlete or professional dancer you need to know that pain is always a cause for concern and should be respected, especially when you are trying to determine the pain’s origin and what it means.

Soreness, on the other hand, can be safely addressed through careful attention for a few days. I believe we all have an inner physician, a voice of knowledge, that will give us guidance on deciding what is okay soreness (or good pain as some describe it), and what isn’t. We simply need to learn to listen.

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Deborah Vogel is a neuromuscular educator who has been involved in the arts medicine field for the past 30 years.  She is a master teacher and author currently on faculty at Oberlin College.  Deborah’s Effective Stretching DVD is available at www.effectivestretching.com