Muscle Soreness vs. Growth

The old adage has always been, “you tear the muscle down and repairing the microtears makes a muscle bigger and stronger.” However, science has learned a little more about this process over the past 20-years.
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💥 We now know that muscle damage itself doesn’t necessarily lead to growth. Rather, the processes that cause damage are what lead to cell signaling and, ultimately, growth. Research has shown in a few different ways how muscle damage/soreness are poorly correlated with growth.
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💥 What does this mean for training? Don’t base the effectiveness of a workout on how sore you feel the next day. If anything, use your soreness as a feedback tool for how stressful the workout was. If you’re not sore at all the next day, it’s possible that you didn’t push quite hard enough and can do more weight or more reps next time you try that workout.
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▪️ Based on: Wackerhage, H., Schoenfeld, B. J., Hamilton, D. L., Lehti, M., & Hulmi, J. J. (2019). Stimuli and sensors that initiate skeletal muscle hypertrophy following resistance exercise. Journal of Applied Physiology, 126(1), 30-43.
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