What Causes Muscle Soreness?

Gabe Mirkin, M.D.

Your muscles should feel sore on some days after you exercise. If you go out and jog the same two miles at the same pace, day after day, you will never become faster, stronger or have greater endurance. If you stop lifting weights when your muscles start to burn, you won't feel sore on the next day and you will not become stronger. All improvement in any muscle function comes from stressing and recovering. On one day, you go out and exercise hard enough to make your muscles burn during exercise. The burning is a sign that you are damaging your muscles. On the next day, your muscles feel sore because they are damaged and need time to recover. Scientist call this DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness.

It takes at least eight hours to feel this type of soreness. You finish a workout and feel great; then you get up the next morning and your exercised muscles feel sore. We used to think that next-day muscle soreness is caused by a buildup of lactic acid in muscles, but now we know that lactic acid has nothing to do it. Next-day muscle soreness is caused by damage to the muscle fibers themselves. Muscle biopsies taken on the day after hard exercise show bleeding and disruption of the z-band filaments that hold muscle fibers together as they slide over each other during a contraction.

Scientists can tell how much muscle damage has occurred by measuring blood levels of a muscle enzyme called CPK. CPK is normally found in muscles and is released into the bloodstream when muscles are damaged. Those exercisers who have the highest post-exercise blood levels of CPK often have the most muscle soreness. Using blood CPK levels as a measure of muscle damage, researchers have shown that people who continue to exercise when their muscles feel sore are the ones most likely to feel sore on the next day.

Many people think that cooling down by exercising at a very slow pace after exercising more vigorously, helps to prevent muscle soreness. It doesn't. Cooling down speeds up the removal of lactic acid from muscles, but a buildup of lactic acid does not cause muscle soreness, so cooling down will not help to prevent muscle soreness. Stretching does not prevent soreness either, since post-exercise soreness is not due to contracted muscle fibers.

Next-day muscle soreness should be used as a guide to training, whatever your sport. On one day, go out and exercise right up to the burn, back off when your muscles really start to burn, then pick up the pace again and exercise to the burn. Do this exercise-to-the-burn and recover until your muscles start to feel stiff, and then stop the workout. Depending on how sore your muscles feel, take the next day off or go at a very slow pace. Do not attempt to train for muscle burning again until the soreness has gone away completely. Most athletes take a very hard workout on one day, go easy for one to seven days afterward, and then take a hard workout again. World-class marathon runners run very fast only twice a week. The best weightlifters lift very heavy only once every two weeks. High jumpers jump for height only once a week. Shot putters throw for distance only once a week. Exercise training is done by stressing and recovering.

Keys to Success: Margaret Hoelzer

Keys to Success, with 2008 Olympic medalist Margaret Hoelzer

1. Have fun. I think people start doing a sport because they love it. Keeping it fun and keeping that love alive is extremely important because otherwise, you will ultimately hate it and you will quit. There’s a mistaken idea out there that if you are successful at something you will enjoy it. I think it’s the other way around – if you enjoy it, you will be successful.

2. Keep perspective. Swimming is not who we are. Rather, it is what we do. It’s a part of us, but it doesn’t define us completely. Fear and pressure – all of that is derived from perspective being lost or things getting blown out of proportion. There are a lot of worse things in life than not winning a race or not making the Olympic Team. Get rid of these external negative things that eat away at your confidence.

3. Be open to change. This means knowing yourself and being able to accept that life is about change. You have to know your priorities and what is best for you. That constitutes knowing when you need to make a change and when something is not working. You can’t be afraid to try something different, like when your coach suggests trying something a new way. It might also mean keeping something the same regardless of what people around you are telling you – not making a change when a change isn’t warranted.

4. Take ownership. Life is a continuous learning process. You never completely know everything, not even about yourself. But as you get older, you should be getting more in tune with yourself. You are a work in progress. You have to take ownership of what you do know. Swimmers get lost out there sometimes. They’ll say things like, “I don’t know that much.” If you know how to swim at all, you know something. Take ownership of the things you know, but also take ownership of the fact that you don’t know everything, and keep learning from informed sources.

5. Be open to evolving. The sport is continuing to evolve, and we have to, as people and as swimmers, evolve. Some of that is technique changes. Even Michael Phelps is changing his stroke. If you want to get better, sometimes you have to evolve and develop new strengths or new techniques. Michael Phelps can get better, and not just in freestyle. If he wants to beat his best times in his other events, he’ll have to get better in those events, too. In my event, some of the best backstrokers in the world had a shallow catch, then they all had a deep catch. You have to keep an open mind toward change. Even the best in the world are constantly trying to get better.

ABCs of Mental Training: M is for Motivation

BY AIMEE KIMBALL, PhD//Correspondent

If you asked most people if they wanted to wake up before 7 a.m., exhaust their body, and then do it again in the afternoon after a day of classes, most people would laugh and wonder who would actually want to do that.

Well, if you are a swimmer, you’ve seen many days like that and may actually wonder yourself why you stick to this regimen.

The fact is, to be a swimmer you have to have some type of motivation driving you to push your body and your mind to their limits. This article focuses on types of motivation that can keep you pursuing your goals and some motivational tricks to keep your intensity up even when desire might be down.

Types of Motivation

Not everyone is motivated for the same reasons. Some people swim for a scholarship, others swim because they love the sport, some do it because their friends are on the team, others because their parents signed them up, some simply for exercise. Your motivation for swimming is actually very important to understand, because when the going gets tough, this is what will keep you going.

The two main types of motivation are extrinsic and intrinsic.

• Extrinsic is external motivation. you swim as a means to an end, to get something out of it. For example, you swim to get your name in the paper or to keep a scholarship.
• Intrinsic is internal motivation and is often associated with a true enjoyment of the sport, meaning you swim because you find pleasure in improving or simply just have fun being in the water.

While neither type is necessarily “better” than the other, research suggests that when faced with major obstacles, swimmers who have more intrinsic motivation tend to persevere.

Think of it this way, if you are externally motivated, you feel like you HAVE to swim for one reason or another. If you are internally motivated, you feel like you WANT to swim for whatever reason. These small words-want to versus have to-make a big difference because if swimming isn’t going well, (ex: you are working hard but not seeing results in competition) and you feel you have to swim well to get a scholarship, not only are you going to feel more pressure, but over time, it’s easier to give up and say to yourself, “I’m not good enough to get a scholarship, so I might as well quit.”

However, if you’re intrinsically motivated and things aren’t going well, you might still be upset, but you’re less likely to quit since you’re not swimming only for results, you’re swimming because you enjoy it.

On the flip side, sometimes we need extrinsic motivation to enhance performance. If swimming is only about having fun and enjoying the sport, the sheer exhaustion that two-a-day practices bring isn’t always enjoyable. So while we might be having fun with teammates, the actual act of swimming early in the morning may not be fun. So for some people, what motivates them on these days is extrinsic. You have to work hard at these practices so you can improve or so your coach doesn’t kick you off of the team.

Overall, make sure you have a strong intrinsic desire because this is a necessity for long-term commitment to any activity. Also, make sure you know what extrinsically motivates you and what you can use as incentives for those days you just really don’t want to be at the pool or don’t want to be working hard.

Enhancing Intrinsic Motivation

The higher your level of competition, the more external motivation becomes a part of your life. It’s hard to avoid the drive for medals, for attention, or if you’re really good, endorsements.

However, if we focus only on these external forces, it’s easy to forget that, at the heart of it all, we swim because we love it. So how do we keep our intrinsic drive stronger than our external motivators?

First, by reminding ourselves daily why we want to swim and what we enjoy. If you keep a swimming journal (which I always suggest people do), each day before you go to sleep write down what you are looking forward to the next day at practice. By doing this you keep your focus positive and on what you find enjoyable.

Second, at the end of practice, you can write down what you actually liked about practice or why it was a good day. You could even include a story about something funny that happened at practice or how much you’re looking forward to having a spaghetti dinner with your team.

Something else to remind you that you love the sport is to put a picture in your notebook from when you were really young, maybe one of your first swimming memories, so you always can re-connect with the enjoyment of just splashing around on a summer day.

Using Extrinsic Incentives to Enhance Performance

You don’t want to overemphasize external rewards, but on the days when you need an extra mental push to keep you working hard, here are some quick motivators that you can use:

1. Reward yourself for attaining goals, rather than using punishment for falling short. This goes for practice, not just competition.
2. Know what you are working towards. Whether it’s an Olympic medal or a specific time barrier you want to break, post this goal somewhere you will see it on a daily basis.
3. Tell a teammate (or coach) when you are feeling a bit lazy and ask them to really push you hard and not let you get away with this.
4. Let your parents or roommates know your practice goals so when you get home they can hold you accountable and ask you if you achieved them.
5. Have a “Worker of the Week” award and at the end of each practice week, have the coach or team captain acknowledge who really went above and beyond. Depending on the nature of the team, maybe this person gets to pick one event they want to swim (or not swim) at the next meet.
6. Compete in practice. Challenge teammates to try to keep up with you.
7. Have specific goals for competition, ideally focused on swimming a specific time rather than just on winning.

Be creative, think about what has gotten you through tough days in the past and know what you can use to motivate you now.

Summary

Know what motivates you. Everyone is a little bit different not only in what gets them started, but what keeps them going and what helps them to exert maximum effort. Always stay connected with what you enjoy about the sport, not just what you get out of it. Finally, remember it’s up to you to motivate yourself; you can’t always rely on others.

On that note, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes:

“Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must first set yourself on fire.”

Make it great!

Dr. Aimee

About Aimee C. Kimball, PhD:

Dr. Kimball is the Director of Mental Training for the UPMC Center for Sports Medicine. She is an Association of Applied Sport Psychology Certified Consultant, and is a member of the American Psychological Association, the United States Olympic Committee’s Sport Psychology Registry, the USA Swimming Sports Medicine Network, and the NCAA Speakers Bureau. She works with athletes, coaches, and parents to help them achieve success in sport and life.

For more information contact: kimballac@upmc.edu, 412-432-3777, http://sportsmedicine.upmc.com/MentalTrainingProgram.htm

ABCs of Mental Training: L is for Leadership

Aaron Peirsol was the 2009 U.S. World Championships men's team captain. (Photo by Al Bello//Getty Images).

By Aimee Kimball, PhD//Correspondent

“The great teams of the past all had great leaders within the group...Each had his own style but they all demanded excellence from the people around them. Not just once in a while, not just when things were going good for them, but all the time.”

–Rick Pitino

Leadership is not an easy thing. As basketball coach Rick Pitino said, leaders must be consistent in making those around them better, regardless of the situation. If you are currently a leader for your team or you aspire to be, here are some quick leadership tips to help you and your teammates excel, enjoy, and encourage each other.

Know what it means to be a leader

Sometimes athletes are formally named a team captain and other times they emerge as an informal team leader. In either case, it is important to really know what leadership is. I was once told that leadership is accomplishing things through others and that leadership is about the followers, not the leaders. As such, it is important to focus on what others need from you and the best way to know what they want is to ask your teammates what they expect of their captains/leaders. If they need you to be unconditionally encouraging, to give pep talks, to be a disciplinarian, or to lead by example, then your responsibility is to try to do these things. There are various types of leadership styles and maybe you aren’t comfortable being a vocal leader and giving pre-meet speeches, but sometimes being a leader means being willing to be uncomfortable to make others comfortable.

Part of what it means to be a leader is to recognize the many roles you play:

• Spokesperson/Representative
• Decision maker
• Scapegoat
• Motivator
• Messenger
• Mediator
• Friend/Teammate/Child/Sibling…

As a leader, you don’t just get to swim your race anymore; you have to do what you did before, plus fulfill these numerous roles. Ultimately, your job is to empower others to work towards success, to help them enjoy their sport, and to teach them how to cope with obstacles and to move forward.

Accept the risks and challenges

While initially most people enjoy the fact that teammates or coaches view them as a leader, it eventually sinks in that there are many challenges leaders face.

Some lessons leaders learn the hard way are:

• You are always watched and always responsible
• Trust and respect are fragile
• You won’t always be liked
• You must deal with conflict
• You may be disappointed
• The “right thing” isn’t always the easy thing

If you do fulfill your roles and you are successful at leading your peers, you will learn to accept that you will often have to make difficult decisions, you will be forced to be brutally honest with people, and you will likely have to resolve conflicts. These are all important skills to develop that will help you in all areas of life.

Develop trusting relationships

To be an effective leader, those around you must trust you. They must respect you and know that you are doing what you can to help all members of the team to be successful. To develop this trust, get to know everyone as individuals. It is easy to spend time with your friends or teammates who are your age or ability level, but it’s extremely important to develop personal relationships with everyone on the team. This helps you to know how to motivate and communicate with individuals and it gives them a reason to trust you. If they know you care about them as a person, they are more likely to follow your lead. This also shows them that they matter to you and to the team, which is something younger and less experienced members often need to be confident and motivated to succeed. Something else that can help to develop trust and respect is to be willing to admit when you are wrong. You may make bad decisions, but when you own up to these choices and admit that you made a mistake, people will eventually understand and respect your ability to be honest with them.

Create a culture

One of the most important responsibilities of a leader is to create a culture for the group. By creating a set of standards, values, and expectations together with the team, you can ensure that people will be on the same page. You can use these expectations to guide your own leadership, first by making sure you exceed the standards of the team but also by making sure you hold everyone accountable to living up to them. These standards aren’t necessarily revolving around specific achievement levels like finishing in the top 3. These standards and values should focus on behaviors expected of each team member, things like effort, attitude, commitment and even behaviors outside of swimming such as expectations for grades and healthy life decisions. Additionally, creating a culture where team members compete but cooperate can help to make sure your teammates are pushing themselves and everyone around them to be and to do their best every time they are at the pool.

Create a leadership game plan

You don’t have to just muddle your way through being a leader. You can create a plan for yourself that will allow you to utilize your strengths and be as effective as you can. You can do this quick exercise to identify the qualities you have that help you the most as well as areas you can improve on.

• What are your strengths?
• What will you continue to do to build upon these strengths?
• How can I use these strengths to resolve team issues?
• What areas can you improve on as a leader?
• What actions will you take to improve on these areas?
• 3 years from now what do you want former teammates to say about you?

Summary

Being a leader require more than just being a good swimmer. You must be a “people person” who sincerely cares about the success of the team and the happiness of your teammates. It takes time and experience to be an effective leader, but if you look at leadership like any other skill you realize it is a tool that will help you now and later in life.

Make it great!

Dr. Aimee

About Aimee C. Kimball, PhD:

Dr. Kimball is the Director of Mental Training for the UPMC Center for Sports Medicine. She is an Association of Applied Sport Psychology Certified Consultant, and is a member of the American Psychological Association, the United States Olympic Committee’s Sport Psychology Registry, the USA Swimming Sports Medicine Network, and the NCAA Speakers Bureau. She works with athletes, coaches, and parents to help them achieve success in sport and life.

For more information contact: kimballac@upmc.edu, 412-432-3777, http://sportsmedicine.upmc.com/MentalTrainingProgram.htm