Nothing. DON'T judge a workouts effectivness on if you got sore or not. Judge it on if you are able to add weight or reps next session. Here are two quick snippets on DOMS I wrote recently:
Many trainees base when they should hit the gym again, or hit a certain bodypart again based on if it is still sore or not. If it’s not sore it certainly must be recovered, right? WRONG! As most experienced trainees know, muscle often just don’t get sore no matter what you throw at them and the more frequently you train, the less soreness there usually is. A guy that hits a bodyparty once every 9 days will almost always be sore, the one in 7 guys quite often, and the 2-3 day a week guys often rarely or never. Does this mean they are recovering faster and micro-trauma is not occurring? Not at all, it just means you are not feeling it.
Our current understanding of DOMS is that DOMS is caused by nerves being irritated by the micro-trauma and inflammatory cytokines / CA+2 Leak. But…….eventually the nerves lose sensitivity to the stimulus, even though the amount of micro-trauma can remain constant. You are still not recovered, not feel sore, train again, and make slow or no progress. YOUR barometer of recovery should be if you are bale to add a bit more weight to the bar, or get another rep or two. If you can’t you are endlessly repeating the prior workout. What is the point in that?
Delayed onset muscle soreness is something that leads many people to the "no gain zone", and then forever keeps them there. Many wrongly believe that unless they are "tore up" they didn't stimulate growth.......they are in most cases WRONG! While there is nothing wrong with being sore, you need to understand that after you have done a lift for more than a few sessions you are likely to be less and less sore. Also some muscles rarely or NEVER get sore. My biceps and delts are some examples. I could do 50 sets for my delts and never feel a bit sore. Regardless they still grow well.
You have no doubt noticed that some muscles don't get very sore, while others always feel way beat-up. And almost everyone notices that when you do a lift you haven’t done in a long time you tend to get sore as hell the first time or two, then less and less each session. This leads many to either change their lifts CONSTANTLY (which can be beneficial to SOME people) or do more ad more sets/lifts/or use more intensity to ensure they get beat-up enough. In most cases this is simply not needed. Some trainees get sore every time they train, others only when changing lifts, and some people almost never, yet all these categories of trainees can all grow extremely well if the training and diet is properly laid out.
Your barometer of success in the gym should be an ever increasing load on the bar, not how “pumped” you get, or how sore you are the following days.
Iron Addict
