No muscle soreness after exercise: what it says about your training and how your muscles adapt

In this article you will read what it means if you have no muscle soreness after exercise, why the soreness fades once you train regularly, and whether you need muscle soreness to build muscle. That matters, because a workout without soreness can feel like a workout that did nothing, and then you might train harder than you need to. The research on muscle growth shows something different.⁠⁴ The BioProfile recovery scan gives you an indication of where your recovery stands today. Recovery is one of the 11 areas the full scan assesses. It is not a diagnosis. It is insight that shows you where you stand today and helps you make better choices in your diet and lifestyle. The scan does not point to a cause and does not make a diagnosis. Only a doctor can do that.

No muscle soreness after exercise: what it means

One study put the idea of “no pain, no gain” directly to the test. Two groups followed the same eight-week programme of hard cycling in which the leg muscles produced force while they lengthened, 20 minutes a session, three times a week. One group built up so gradually that the muscles would not be damaged. The other group started with a hard first session. That group had more than five times as much creatine kinase in the blood, a marker of muscle damage, and reported muscle soreness. Yet over those eight weeks both groups made the same progress in muscle size and strength, with about a quarter more strength in each group.⁠¹

If you finish a session thinking “I have no muscle soreness after exercise”, that session may still have done its job. In this study, the soreness came with the hard start, and the muscles grew with and without soreness.

Why you stop getting muscle soreness when you train regularly

Most people find that a new exercise makes their muscles sore at first and that the soreness goes away after a few weeks. Researchers call this the repeated bout effect. After a session in which the muscle works while it lengthens, the muscle adapts, and a similar session later on causes less damage. The possible adaptations fall into three groups: changes in the nerves, in the mechanics of the muscle and in the muscle cells. One example: muscle fibres gain more of their small contracting units along their length, so each contraction puts less strain on the fibre. The author notes that no single theory fully explains the effect yet.⁠²

A review of 23 articles found the same pattern when a preparatory session came first. People who first did a preparatory session before a workout that causes muscle damage had less muscle damage and less muscle soreness afterwards than control groups. That group also kept more strength and range of motion in the four days after the muscle-damaging workout. The preparatory session worked best when it came 2 to 4 days beforehand.⁠⁵

Put simply: if a similar workout no longer gives you sore muscles, your muscles have probably adapted to the work. Less soreness can also come from a lighter or familiar workout, and people differ. It does not mean your training has stopped working.

Do you need muscle soreness for muscle growth?

In a ten-week study, ten young men followed a strength training programme, and a small piece of muscle was taken at the start, after three weeks and after ten weeks. The damage after a workout was highest at the start, lower after three weeks and lower again after ten weeks. Only in week ten had the muscle fibres grown larger. After three and after ten weeks, there was a strong link between protein building in the muscle after a workout and how much the muscle grew. At the start, there was no link yet.⁠³

In the first weeks, protein building after a workout went together with more muscle damage, with no link to growth. Growth became visible once the damage after each workout decreased.

A review of studies on strength training points the same way. In the first sessions a muscle mainly swells and does not really grow yet. Real growth builds up over several weeks. The authors conclude that muscle damage is not the process behind muscle growth, and training programmes that caused little damage produced similar growth to programmes that caused a lot.⁠⁴ For you, this means muscle soreness is not something to aim for. What the studies link to growth is training regularly over weeks.

Can you exercise with muscle soreness?

For pain in your muscles and joints, Thuisarts says you can try to carry on with what you normally do every day. If moving makes the pain worse, do a bit less for a while.⁠⁶ Staying active remains the starting point. The Gezondheidsraad advises adults in the Netherlands to do at least two and a half hours of moderate-intensity exercise a week, along with activities that strengthen muscles and bones at least twice a week.⁠⁷

In practice, mild muscle soreness is usually no reason to stop moving. It can be a reason to take things a little easier for a while.

When to see your GP

Make an appointment with your GP if the pain is severe, lasts a long time, gets worse or keeps coming back. Do the same if the pain lasts longer than you expected, if you cannot get back to your usual activities, or if you also have a fever or feel more and more unwell. Call straight away if, along with the pain, you are breathing with difficulty or very fast, have chest pain, suddenly sweat a lot or become drowsy.⁠⁶ See your GP or a physiotherapist if a single movement suddenly causes a lot of pain in a muscle or joint, if you can no longer walk properly or use your arm properly, or if pressing on a tendon hurts.⁠⁸

What the recovery scan measures

The recovery scan asks how your recovery feels to you and turns your answers into a score you can use as a starting point. A questionnaire does not look inside a muscle. It does not measure muscle damage, a blood value or muscle growth. If you repeat the scan later with the same questions, you have two scores to compare instead of a feeling.

In summary

No muscle soreness after exercise does not mean your workout did nothing. Groups with and without muscle soreness gained the same amount of muscle and strength. Soreness fades as the muscle adapts to training, and growth became visible as the damage after each session went down. With mild soreness you can usually keep moving, and the Thuisarts signs above tell you when to see a doctor.