Kick Your DOMS for Good

Delayed onset muscle soreness messes up our workout schedules and hurts like hell—but proper nutrition, training, and recovery can help you fend off this post-ride annoyance and have more fun

By Lauren Steele and Molly Hurford October 13, 2016

 

It’s the day after a you sprinted a few extra hill repeats, survived a long-overdue squat session, or finally got back into your cycling routine, and your muscles feel like they are made of rocks lodged between your bones. You can thank a condition called DOMS for that. 

Developing muscle soreness after a hard ride is normal—even if it shows up a day or two after you’ve stopped pedaling.  The simplified explanation for your shuffling steps and groan-filled movement is that DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) is a symptom of exercise-induced muscle damage, and a sign that your body is experiencing inflammation—a necessary part of recovery involving cellular repair, which lessens as we adapt to exercise. Inflammation has a downside, though, as noted in Runner's World Performance Nutrition for Runners: Immune cells release free radicals and toxins while repairing muscle damage, exacerbating soreness and contributing to secondary muscle damage—another term for DOMS.

But the degree of your DOMS discomfort doesn’t need to be so extreme that you avoid training because of it. “DOMS is a natural occurrence, but you can control it so it doesn't effect your workout the next day,” says physical therapist Gary Guerriero, co-owner of the U.S. Athletic Training Center. Adopting smart strategies that fit your lifestyle can make huge differences in your pain levels. “Consistency is key—whatever you're doing, if you're consistent, it will help you,” Guerriero adds.

We tapped Guerriero and a panel of experts to help you prevent DOMS with nutrition and lifestyle changes; ride in a DOMS-proofing way; and minimize muscle soreness post-ride

Understanding DOMS

Anticipating When DOMS Will Happen
DOMS usually accompanies exercise where the muscle is lengthening (known as eccentric movement)—like the part of the pedal stroke where you’re releasing your foot toward the ground. DOMS is common in cyclists because of that movement, especially after harder workouts, says Dr. Oliver Witard, senior lecturer in Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism at the University of Stirling and part of the Gatorade Sports Science Institute’s extended network of experts. 

Stop Celebrating Soreness
 “Feeling sore after a workout can feel like validation that you worked hard, [but] you shouldn’t seek that after every workout,” says Dr. Blair Callaghan, DPT, of Washington Wellness Physical Therapy & SportsCare. “DOMS is a sign of damage and fatigue.

“You sprain your ankle then you’re going to walk differently; if you have DOMS then you’re going to exercise differently,” she adds. “You sit in the saddle differently, you pedal differently, and you exert energy differently—and that’s how you end up injured. There’s no long-term or short-term benefit to being sore, so let your muscles catch up to the workload. Just because you’re not sore doesn’t mean you aren’t getting stronger.” 

Pre-Ride Preventative Care

Cross-Training Is Good Medicine
For many of us, saddle time is sacred, but we can become stronger riders by supplementing cycling—even exchanging it—with other activities. 

“It’s really difficult to say, ‘I’ll skip my ride and go to the pool and swim’ when that ride is what you look forward to doing… but if you commit a day or two a week to lifting weights and supporting stabilizing muscles you’ll be a healthy, well-rounded athlete and I guarantee you’ll see improvement on the bike,” Callaghan says. She recommends riders take one or two days a week to weight-train, do yoga, swim, or jog to vary muscle utilization and decrease stress on cycling-specific muscles. 

Eat More Antioxidants
There’s been some scrutiny of the claim that antioxidants decrease inflammation, but significant research suggests antioxidants blunt cell damage by strengthening the immune system and interrupting the domino-like damaging effects of free radicals that contribute to initial soreness and DOMS. However, foods containing antioxidants like vitamins A, C, and E—blueberries, pomegranates, and cherries, Witard says—offer benefits outside of antioxidants, so you might as well dig in.

Up Your Intake of Healthy Fat
Fat helps keep our cells intact. "Omega-3s like those in fish oil incorporate themselves into the cell membrane of the muscle and form a barrier, and they may preserve the cell membrane’s integrity,” Witard says. The alternative is leaky cells that spill an enzyme called creatine kinase into your system, which contributes to muscle aches and cramps. Fatty fish (not fish oil supplements) pack the most significant amount of omega-3s, though the fish-uninclined can resort to foods like flax seeds and spinach. 

Consider Supplementing With Vitamin D
Witard also recommends adding Vitamin D to your diet, which recent studies have identified as a key agent in expediting muscle repair. Other studies have seen vitamin D improve muscle function and protect against injuries. Choose foods like fatty fish and dairy products for a Vitamin D boost.

Graze on Protein
You will best limit DOMS if you eat protein throughout the day, says Nate Dunn, CSSD, a USAC Level 1 certified coach. Aim for 20 to 30 grams of protein every three hours. When you are “dosing” with protein all day, you are providing your muscles with a steady stream of amino acids—the building blocks of healthy muscle. It doesn’t have to be a complicated protein shake—snack on Greek yogurt, nuts, or whatever you like best.

On the Bike

Start Slow
The most basic rule of preventing muscle damage is using progression. “You get DOMS when you bite off more than you can chew while training,” says Dunn. “Figure out where you’re coming from and work from there. Are you lean? Overweight? Active? Coming back from an injury? Honestly assess where you’re at.” If you’re coming off the couch, he says, ride three times a week at most, with each ride lasting between 60 and 90 minutes. Utilizing a steady, progressive loading strategy is ideal for getting stronger without overwhelming your body.

Spin, Don’t Push
Maintaining a higher cadence will “minimize the amount of torque transferred to your joints and overall stress on your muscles,” Dunn says. “You want to stay in the 90rpm range and get comfortable there before you start doing sprint intervals.”

Know Your Limits—Then Push Them
“There’s no problem with overreaching and giving yourself a big workout or a hard week or training, but after you overreach, accept that you wont feel as good,” says Dr. Stuart Phillips, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster University and fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine and the American College of Nutrition. “You have to scale back after pushing the limit so you don’t go over the edge and end up with a muscle injury. If you can do that, a week or two down the road you’ll have improved fitness since your muscles have been pushed and had the opportunity to rebuild. Successive big weeks are overdoing it. And overdoing it is overtraining.” 

ASAP Post-Ride

Refuel the Right Way
Our bodies use amino acids from protein to repair exercise-induced muscle damage. Supplement that process with a protein-packed snack between 30 and 60 minutes after working out, and then keep “dosing” to minimize DOMS. Nanci Guest, ead dietician for the Pan Am Games Nanci Guest recommends eating around 20 grams of protein after your workout for optimal recovery. Choose snacks with whey protein for best results; whey contains the amino acid leucine, which helps initiate muscle protein synthesis.

Foam-Roll the Pain Away
Muscles knot up after exercise, but we can help them function more smoothly by breaking up these adhesions and scar tissue with self-massage using a foam roller. 

“I’m a huge fan of the foam roller,” Callaghan says. “It mimics a soft tissue massage and increases blood flow and nutrition to injured muscles and heals them faster.” 

Foam rollers usually cost less than $50, and come in various sizes; that initial investment definitely pays off when you can soothe and prevent aches anywhere, any time. Roll out on the go or in front of your nightly TV show for significantly less dough than a regular professional massage. “There’s no excuse not to do it,” Callaghan says.

If Pain Sets In

Don’t Rely on Pain Relievers
Witard’s last word of advice is to avoid depending on anti-inflammatory drugs or other pain relievers to get through a workout in the midst of DOMS recovery. It’s tempting to reach for the bottle of Advil after tough rides, but anti-inflammatories can do a lot more harm than good; rather than solving your problem, these drugs simply mask it, allowing you to do more damage and feel worse later. Delaying soreness doesn’t alleviate it.  

Seek Help
If you're plagued with DOMS after every workout, consider looking for a physical therapist who is experienced in helping cyclists. There are tons of (less accessible) alternative therapies, Guerriero says, from cryotherapy to acupuncture to electric-stim massage to hyperbaric chambers.  

"The hard thing is finding someone good who does these things," he adds, so before signing up with the nearest PT, assess your options and don’t be afraid to ask questions about how they deal with DOMS.

7 Surprising Sources of Cycling Pain

The root cause of what's hurting might not be what you expect

By selene yeager August 31, 2016

 

Illustration by Shutterstock

Sometimes it’s really clear why you’re hurting. Maybe you slid out on your hip and now your hip hurts. Maybe you rode 100 miles after never having gone more than 45 and now your knees, back, neck, and everything else hurts.  Other times, the source of pain is more mysterious. That’s because pain doesn’t actually come from where it hurts: It comes from your brain as a signal to get your attention and protect you. These signals might be protecting an injured body part, like a pulled muscle or inflamed joint. But not always, says Grove Higgins, DC, medical director of Human Performance and Rehabilitation Center of Colorado Springs. 

“Pain gets the message to you that something is wrong. But it doesn’t tell you what or even how major it is,” he says. “Depending on how full your ‘threat bucket’ is, a sliver can feel like a log. Or there can be a log that you barely notice.” 

Threat bucket? Yep. We all have one. It represents the cumulative stress (real or perceived) inside our brain. When it gets too full, the brain sounds the alarm in the form of pain. Here are some sources of pain that may surprise you.

Your Emojis

That's right, your emotions can significantly affect how you process pain. In one study of Swedish airline baggage handlers, the severity of back and shoulder pain they felt and how much it interfered with their job was directly associated with how they rated their job satisfaction.

It’s not just “in your head,” says Higgins. Stress not only creates muscle tension, which can lead to pain, but it also interferes with your brain’s ability to inhibit all the little pain signals it gets during the day. So when you’re stressed, your pain threshold may be lowered. Whether it’s yoga, deep breathing exercises, meditation, using a dayplanner, or making changes in your life situation, lowering your daily stress level can help reduce pain

Scar Tissue

Cumulative trauma through overuse and unresolved tension (like, say, hammering on the bike without adequate recovery) can lead to scar tissue, reduced range of motion and painful trigger points.

“It puts your body in constant fight or flight mode, so there’s always tension,” says Higgins. When there’s chronic tension, there’s often pain, because the brain is trying to get your attention.

In this case, planned recovery, cross-training, foam rolling, and certain massage techniques like active release therapy (ART) can help.

Your Imbalances

Are your quads doing all the pedaling while your glutes are just along for the ride? Are your chest muscles so shortened and your back so weak that you’re in a perpetual aerodynamic tuck, even when you’re walking down the street? It’s easy to develop muscular and postural imbalances in a sport like cycling, where you’re holding one position and calling on just a few primary movers for prolonged periods of time.

“When your thoracic [mid to upper] spine is locked up, it puts strain on your shoulders and even hip flexors,” says Higgins.

Full body stretching and strengthening exercises twice a week can go a long way in preventing pain due to body imbalance. 

Your Sense of Balance

Your body is constantly evaluating where you are in space and keeping you balanced and upright, both on your feet and on your wheels as you ride. This is called your vestibular system (inner ear) function. When it’s dysfunctional, your performance takes a hit, says Higgins.

“Your muscular tension increases and your cycling efficiency suffers, which means you’re working harder than you should, just to keep rolling down the road in a straight line,” he says. Muscling the bike around like this paves the way for pain. 

To test yours: Stand on one foot and move your head left and right at a slow pace. You should be able to do this for 30 seconds without losing balance or touching your other foot to the ground. 

To sharpen it: Perform this “Clock Face Balancing” drill. Stand on your left foot and tap the toes of your right foot at each clock position from 12 to 6 about 2 feet away from your body. Repeat standing on the right foot while tapping counterclockwise from 12 to 6 with your left food. Perform once with eyes open. Then try with eyes closed (and make that your goal).

Your Past

Old cycling injuries have a way of coming back to haunt us, even after they are seemingly fully healed.

For one, injuries often don’t heal “100-percent good as new,” so there can be residual damage which leads to imbalances. In that case, your pain threshold may be lower, because the nerves are more easily triggered and the brain—perhaps overly eager to protect this once-injured area—may be quicker to signal pain. 

To help “reassure” your body that those old injuries are indeed healed, Higgins recommends joint mobility drills—moving the joint or limb through its entire range of available, pain-free motion. “These can be as simple as ankle tilts and knee circles,” says Higgins. “But the power is profound to enhance brain-body connection and reinforce that the problem area is actually okay now,” he says. “If you encounter pain while moving through a range of motion, slow down the movement and reduce the range of motion until there is no pain. Eventually your pain-free range will increase.”

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8 Quick Recovery Tricks to Get You Back on the Bike

Easy ways to bounce back from a hard ride as a stronger and faster cyclist

By selene yeager January 15, 2016

  

Photograph by David Michalczuk/Flickr

Cool Down

Take a few minutes to spin easy after you’ve throttled your legs with a hard ride. The blood vessels in your legs expand while you’re hammering away: Stop abruptly, and the blood just pools down there. This not only makes you lightheaded, but also limits your ability to get fresh nutrient- and oxygen-rich blood in and metabolic waste out—two keys to muscle repair and recovery.

Rub Down

You probably don’t travel with a massage therapist, but you can travel to races and events with a massage stick or mini foam roller—or even a couple of tennis balls and socks. Whatever works, bring it and use it. Massaging your legs helps push out the fluid carrying the waste products of muscle breakdown, and encourages fresh blood to flow in and help rebuild. Research shows that massage following exercise can improve circulation up to 72 hours later. It also breaks up muscle adhesions (knots) that can form from overuse, so your muscles work more smoothly.

 

 Photograph by Thomas MacDonald

Slip on the Socks

The research on how much compression wear improves performance is still fairly equivocal, but studies indicate it can help reduce swelling, fatigue, and muscle soreness after intense exercise. If nothing else, slip on some compression socks. The soleus (calf muscle) is called your second heart because it shepherds blood back to your chest. Compression socks accelerate that process, which in turn improves blood oxygen levels and subsequent recovery.

 

Photograph by Matt Rainey

Drink Up

Dehydration can delay the recovery process because your blood essentially turns to sludge. So stay hydrated as best you can during hard efforts and chase a hard ride or race with a bottle of your favorite recovery drink (and we don’t mean beer… save that for afterwards), be it chocolate milk or something fancier.

Skip the Antioxidants

People used to believe that dosing up on antioxidants like Vitamins C and E could stave off free-radical damage done during hard exercise and accelerate healing. Today, we know the opposite is true: Research shows that during the acute recovery period immediately following a hard workout, antioxidant supplements can counteract the beneficial effects of exercise. By squelching free radicals before your body can react and adapt to them, you keep your muscles from recovering appropriately. In head-to-head comparisons of muscle damage and cell rupture between supplement users and those who go without, those who popped antioxidants appeared to experience more muscle injury and slower recovery. Some studies have found taking C and E after exercise can also counteract the insulin-sensitizing effects of exercise, which is a fancy way of saying your muscles won’t be able to pull in the glycogen and nutrients they need to restock and repair.

Eat More Protein

Branched-chain amino acids found in protein have been widely shown to decrease exercise-induced muscle damage and promote muscle building and repair. You can buy branched-chain amino acid supplements, but eating high-protein foods like beef, chicken, eggs, fish, nuts, and legumes will also get you what you need. Get a high-protein snack, shake, or meal in your system after you crush a ride to kick-start your muscle repair.

 

Carb Up

Hard rides blow out your carbohydrate stores. You body is most primed to replenish them within about 30 minutes of a vigorous workout. Get in a carb-rich snack within that window. Plus, that protein you’re also eating speeds up glycogen restocking as well as muscle repair. A nut butter sandwich or some Greek yogurt and fruit are a couple ideal post-ride recovery foods.

Rest Up

Sleep is healing. Muscle-building hormones surge during shut-eye, while those hormones that break down muscle decrease. Aim for seven to eight hours of sleep a night or sneak in a 30-minute power nap, which research shows can also help lower stress-hormone levels and promote recovery.

It's Time to Say Bye Bye to BMI

Research shows the Body Mass Index doesn’t yield correct answers when it comes to athletes' health

By selene yeager August 1, 2016

Since the mid-nineties, health care professionals have used Body Mass Index (BMI)—a measure of how much mass someone has relative to their height—to identify whether a patient is at a healthy weight. A BMI between 18.5 and 24.99 is considered normal; 25 to 29.9 is overweight; and 30 and above is obese. The BMI is so revered as a standard that the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has proposed people with higher BMIs should also have to shell out more for insurance premiums, since being overweight or obese can increase your risk for diabetes and heart disease, and is considered unhealthy.

That’s a move researchers from UCLA have condemned as not just unfair, but downright incorrect, in a paper published earlier this year in the International Journal of Obesity. 

In the study, the researchers pulled data from 40,420 people in the most recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and analyzed the link between BMI and key health markers including blood pressure, glucose, insulin resistance, and cholesterol and triglyceride levels. The BMI/health connection didn’t pan out—by a long shot. Researchers found that nearly half of overweight men and women and 29 percent of obese people were otherwise totally healthy. On the flip side, more than 30 percent of those with normal BMIs were actually unhealthy according to those markers. 

“There are tens of millions of people who are overweight and obese and are perfectly healthy," says study author A. Janet Tomiyama, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at UCLA. “Right now, we have this laser focus on weight and a flawed measure like BMI, when we should be talking about health.”

That’s really important for active people like cyclists, for whom the BMI problem is two-fold. Not only are some of us likely caught in that high BMI bracket though otherwise healthy, but also BMI—which is calculated by dividing a person's weight in kilograms by the square of the person's height in meters—was really never meant to be applied to an active and certainly not athletic population. (Here's how you can reach your ideal cycling weight, BMI be damned.)

We active folk tend to have a higher proportion of muscle tissue, which by nature is denser than fat tissue. That means we sometimes see big numbers on the scale even if we have relatively low body fat. BMI also says nothing about how your fat is distributed. Two people may have identical BMI measurements (“healthy” or otherwise), but where one might store most of their fat as deep abdominal, visceral fat—which is known to be a high health risk—the other might store it as relatively innocuous subcutaneous fat (the kind you pinch under your skin).

If you’re concerned about your BMI or your health-care provider raises a red flag over yours, Tomiyama, who directs UCLA's Dieting, Stress, and Health Lab, suggests gathering more data for a fuller picture of your weight, health, and fitness. A body composition test performed with a DEXA scan, skinfold caliper test, or bio-impedance scan (like a Tanita scale) can give you a better idea of your actual body composition, so you know how much of you is lean, muscle tissue relative to fat. Also, see your doc and round up your general health metrics:

“In our study we used a very stringent and comprehensive definition of health that included blood pressure, triglycerides, 'good' and 'bad' cholesterol, blood sugar, and inflammation,” says Tomiyama, noting that these are common tests that any healthcare provider can do and are far better indications of how healthy you are than BMI alone.