How to alleviate muscle soreness

[MetalFortress]

I tried the following after reading this quote on the HST website:

Utilizing lactic acid as a stimulus for tendon repair/health
Now HST incorporates a few other things such as higher reps (for lactic acid) to prepare the muscles and tendons for future heavy loads. This serves as "regular maintenance". Without it, you increase your risk of chronic injuries and pain. The metabolically-taxing reps enhance healing of strained tendons.

I'm surprised how well this worked for me. I just did 10 heavy sets (including one PR) of DB bench two days ago, and 5 heavy sets (including two PRs) of front squats. I am usually sore for three days after really nasty super-volumized workouts. I am not sore today, period.

What you do, is you take a lift you did, and do a real light weight for it, and then bust out reps as fast as you can for 20 seconds. Rest for 10 seconds. Repeat 4 times for each lift. This is like the Tabata protocol except that you do it 8 times there.

What this does is this drops a lactic acid bomb on your muscles. When you flood them with lactic acid, they have more blood flowing to them, carrying nutrients back and forth. Lactic acid also increases growth hormone, which causes you to burn fat as a side effect.

To use this as an example, I did this yesterday for DB bench press and front squats. I used 20 lb DBs for DB bench and the bar for front squats. Since I spent 4 hours doing a moving job, carrying heavy desks and file cabinets around all morning, I did the same thing for bicep curls.

So in conclusion, to get sore less and to stay healthier, drop a lactic acid bomb when you've got DOMS.

 

[Don_Marko]

man I preffer aliviating muscle soreness the old fashioned way... getting a massage with happy ending.

Out of curiousity though, WTF is lactic acid?

 

[snintel]

Interesting. Well its the same as a massage basically where the idea is to get more blood to the muscles... but this works with lactic acid since youre just saturating your muscles with work...

 

[MetalFortress]

Well, since a massage costs money and this doesn't, I choose this