Muscle Soreness After Exercise (DOMS): Why It Happens and What Helps

You finish a new workout feeling fine. The next morning, your legs are a little stiff. By the following day, walking downstairs feels like a punishment and sitting on the toilet is a project. Two days after that, it's gone.

That's delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS. Almost everyone who exercises gets it at some point, especially after trying something new, coming back from a break, or doing a lot of downhill running or lowering movements.

DOMS is normal and usually harmless, but it raises a lot of questions. What causes it? Does it mean the workout was effective? Should you train through it? What actually helps? This guide answers all of those, based on the research.

What is DOMS?

DOMS is muscle pain, stiffness and tenderness that comes on after exercise, rather than during it. Typically:

• It starts around 12 to 24 hours after exercise.
• It peaks around 24 to 72 hours.
• It fades over 3 to 5 days.
• The muscles feel tender to touch, stiff and weaker than normal.
• It's worse when you use or stretch the affected muscles.

A 2003 review by Karoline Cheung and colleagues described DOMS as one of the most common exercise-related complaints, and noted that it also comes with temporary reductions in strength, range of motion and coordination.

What causes DOMS?

It isn't lactic acid

One of the most persistent fitness myths is that DOMS is caused by lactic acid "building up" in your muscles. It isn't. Lactate is produced during hard exercise, but it's cleared from your muscles and blood within an hour or so afterwards. It's long gone by the time DOMS appears.

Eccentric exercise and muscle damage

DOMS is mainly linked to eccentric muscle contractions: when a muscle is working while lengthening. Examples include:

• Lowering a weight slowly.
• The downward phase of a squat or lunge.
• Running downhill, where your quads work hard to control your descent.
• Landing from jumps.

Eccentric work causes small-scale disruption in muscle fibres and the connective tissue around them. The body responds with inflammation and repair processes, and nerve endings in the muscle become more sensitive. That combination produces the soreness and stiffness you feel.

New or unfamiliar exercise

DOMS is strongest after exercise your body isn't used to: a new class, a new sport, a big jump in volume, or your first session after a break. Experienced athletes doing familiar training usually get little or no DOMS.

Does soreness mean it was a good workout?

Not necessarily. Soreness mainly tells you how new or how eccentric the exercise was, not how effective it was.

You can make excellent progress in strength and fitness with very little soreness, especially once your body has adapted. Chasing soreness as a sign of a "good session" often leads to doing too much, too often, which slows progress and raises injury risk.

The repeated bout effect

One of the most useful things to know about DOMS is that it largely protects against itself. After one session that causes soreness, repeating the same exercise a week or two later causes much less soreness and muscle damage. This is called the repeated bout effect.

A 2017 review by Robert Hyldahl and colleagues described how the effect involves changes in the nervous system, the muscle itself and the connective tissue, and how it can last for weeks to months. Even a fairly light first session provides some protection.

In practice, this means:

• The first session of something new will hurt the most. It gets better quickly.
• Introduce new training gradually. A lighter first session gives you much of the protection with less soreness.
• Consistency reduces soreness. Regular training keeps your muscles adapted.

What actually helps with DOMS?

There's a huge market for recovery products. The research is more modest. In 2018, Olivier Dupuy and colleagues published a meta-analysis comparing many post-exercise recovery techniques for muscle soreness, damage, inflammation and fatigue.

Massage

Massage came out as one of the most effective techniques for reducing DOMS and perceived fatigue in the Dupuy meta-analysis. It doesn't need to be a professional sports massage to help; self-massage can also ease discomfort.

Foam rolling

A 2019 meta-analysis by Thimo Wiewelhove and colleagues found that foam rolling had small effects: a slight reduction in perceived muscle pain and small improvements in sprint performance after rolling. It's not a cure, but if it makes you feel better, it's a reasonable option.

Stretching

Stretching is the go-to remedy for many people, but the evidence is clear that it does little for DOMS. A 2011 Cochrane review by Robert Herbert and colleagues found that stretching before or after exercise reduced soreness by only about 1 point on a 100-point scale in the following days, a difference too small to notice. Stretch if you enjoy it, but don't expect it to prevent or fix soreness.

Cold water

Cold water immersion can reduce soreness. However, there's evidence that regularly using cold water immediately after strength training may reduce long-term gains in muscle size and strength. Save it for competition periods or when recovering quickly between events matters more than adaptation.

Light activity

Gentle movement, such as an easy walk, bike ride or swim, increases blood flow and often eases stiffness while you're doing it. The relief is usually temporary, but it can make the days of DOMS more comfortable and keep you moving.

Sleep, food and hydration

Muscle repair needs raw materials and time. Enough protein (spread through the day), enough total food and good sleep all support recovery. They won't make DOMS disappear overnight, but they help your body recover from training generally. Our guide to eating around exercise covers recovery nutrition.

Painkillers

Anti-inflammatory painkillers may reduce soreness a little. But using them routinely around training isn't recommended. They have side effects, and some research suggests they may interfere with training adaptations. Use them occasionally if needed, not as a habit.

Should you train when you have DOMS?

It depends on how sore you are and what you're planning.

• Mild soreness: training is fine. An easy session often helps you feel better.
• Moderate soreness: train different muscle groups, or do easy aerobic exercise. Avoid heavy or high-skill work on the sore muscles.
• Severe soreness: rest or very gentle movement. Strength, coordination and range of motion are reduced, which may raise injury risk in demanding sessions.

Plan around it. If you know a new session will leave you sore, don't schedule your most important workout of the week for the next day.

Soreness or injury?

DOMS feels different from injury. Here's how to tell them apart:

If you're not sure, rest the area and get it checked if it isn't clearly improving after a few days.

How to reduce DOMS from the start

• Start new exercises gently. Use lighter weights and fewer sets in the first session.
• Increase volume gradually. Big jumps in sets, reps or distance bring big soreness.
• Introduce downhill running carefully before hilly races.
• Train consistently. Regular exposure keeps the repeated bout effect working for you.
• Warm up properly. It won't prevent DOMS, but it prepares you for the session.
• Look after recovery basics: sleep, food and easy days.

DOMS in runners

Runners often get DOMS after their first long run in a while, after a race (especially a marathon), and after hilly or downhill routes. Downhill running is particularly effective at causing quad soreness because of the heavy eccentric load.

Practical tips:

• Include some downhill running in training before a hilly race, to build protection.
• After a marathon, expect several days of soreness. Walk, swim or cycle gently, and don't rush back to running.
• Strength training, particularly squats and lunges, builds resilience to eccentric loading. Our strength guide for runners explains how to start.

DOMS in strength training

New lifters and anyone changing their programme will notice DOMS most. It's normal for the first week or two of a new programme to bring significant soreness, which drops off quickly as you adapt.

• In the first week, use about half your planned sets.
• Avoid "testing" your limits on new exercises right away.
• If you're too sore to train a muscle with good form, train something else.

The bottom line

DOMS is a normal response to new or unaccustomed exercise, especially movements that load muscles while they lengthen. It isn't caused by lactic acid, it doesn't mean your workout was better, and it fades within a few days.

Massage, compression and gentle movement can ease it. Stretching does surprisingly little. The best long-term strategy is to introduce new training gradually and train consistently, so the repeated bout effect keeps soreness to a minimum. And if pain is sharp, localised, or not improving, treat it as a possible injury rather than ordinary soreness.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

1. Cheung K, et al. Delayed onset muscle soreness : treatment strategies and performance factors. Sports Medicine, 2003;33(2):145-64. DOI PubMed
2. Dupuy O, et al. An Evidence-Based Approach for Choosing Post-exercise Recovery Techniques to Reduce Markers of Muscle Damage, Soreness, Fatigue, and Inflammation: A Systematic Review With Meta-Analysis. Frontiers in Physiology, 2018;9:403. DOI PubMed
3. Wiewelhove T, et al. A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Foam Rolling on Performance and Recovery. Frontiers in Physiology, 2019;10:376. DOI PubMed
4. Herbert RD, et al. Stretching to prevent or reduce muscle soreness after exercise. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2011;(7):CD004577. DOI PubMed
5. Hyldahl RD, et al. Mechanisms and Mediators of the Skeletal Muscle Repeated Bout Effect. Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews, 2017;45(1):24-33. DOI PubMed