Should You Train When You Are Sore?

You wake up stiff two days after a hard session, or the morning after a game, and the question is whether to go in.

Most of the time the answer is yes. Not to repeat what made you sore, but because sitting still is worse for it than moving is.

What soreness actually is

Hard work leaves microscopic tears in muscle fibre. The body responds by sending collagen and fibrin to repair the area. That repair process is what you are feeling.

The repair is good. What happens to it next is the part that matters. Collagen and fibrin laid into tissue that is not moving hardens and sets restrictions into the muscle. Do that often enough over a career and you get a body full of small stiff patches that never quite got their range back.

Movement is what stops that. It brings blood in, moves waste out, and keeps the tissue sliding while it repairs, so what you get at the end is a repaired muscle rather than a repaired muscle with a knot in it.

What to do instead of nothing

Not the same session again. Something deliberate, at low output, that takes the sore area through range with support around it.

We had a young pitcher come in after a weekend start with a sore shoulder, planning to skip everything above the waist. Instead he went through a shoulder series that worked the whole complex around the joint rather than the joint itself. One series. He left with a shoulder that felt noticeably better than the one he walked in with.

Nothing about that was heavy, and nothing about it was rest.

The distinction to hold

There is a difference between sore and hurt, and it is not subtle once you know to look.

Sore is diffuse, it is in the muscle belly, it warms up as you move, and it is roughly the same on both sides. Hurt is sharp, it is at a joint or a specific point, it gets worse as you go, and it is on one side only.

Sore, train. Hurt, get it looked at. Guessing between those two is how a two-week problem becomes a season.