Feelin' the Burn!

When you first start to workout, or try one that's different from what you're use to, you'll usually be tight and sore afterward and will feel like you did a great workout! Then, as you do the exercise more and more and your body becomes accustom to the abuse, you'll find it a lot harder to get to the point where you feel it the next day. Many people believe that when they don't feel sore the next day, they're not working out hard enough. I want to put that myth to rest.

Your body is an amazing machine. It remembers, adapts, adjusts and gets stronger very quickly because it likes to be, and needs to be, efficient. If you start a new exercise program, one that you haven't done before or haven't done in a long time, it gives your body a wake up call, and the process of getting stronger and healing faster begins.

Usually when you workout, depending on the workout, you are tearing your muscles. When you stop exercising, during recovery, the body repairs torn muscles and makes them even stronger than before. Your body wants to be able to handle the workload you demand of it but when it's not use to what you've put it through, it takes longer to heal the damage.

The reason you will stop being so sore after doing a program several times, is because your body remembers the recovery process it went through the first few times, and it repeats that process again and again. When you try something completely different it doesn't take the same measures to heal the damage, so again the body has to learn how to fix its weaknesses.

As long as during the workout you are feeling the burn, and at the end of your set you know you can't do anymore, then you're working hard enough. Increase the intensity of exercise when you start to feel that during the workout you can push harder. You need to do this in order to have the body make adjustments for the more intense workload and toughen up the muscles even more. Until that point, enjoy the fact that you're not feeling sore the next day, and that your body has learned how to heal itself faster so you can work it again sooner.