I woke up this morning and my pain was actually better. If it continues to feel good I am going go workout a different part of my body today as some of you suggested.
I told you we'd talk today. See? It ain't hurtin'. Now, tonight... watch out... the pain will be unbearable... Now, if only I could post something helpful... but I can't!
I have read about that as well, but unless you are going to be a professional weightlifter than you should stretch before you work out. Even professional weightlifters who are in competitions stretch a little before.
I disagree, best thing to do is an active warmup like going on the elliptical or stationary bike for 5 minutes. An even better idea is to do some light warmup sets, ie rack some light weight on the bench and bench that 20 times. This gets the appropriate muscles activated and ready to take on greater loads.
Warmup sets arent a bad idea, I do that, but stretching isnt bad either, just helps prevent pulling something, especially if you're just lifting for exercise and not training to be in the olympics or something.
Sounds like you overdid it. Stretch and try to keep mobil. You're gonna be in some pain. I overdid it about a year ago. I jumped all over my new weightset and pushed myself hard the first day. I swear it felt like many of my muscle groups were going to explode. I was sore for about 4 days. The first day was bad, but the second and 3rd, I was either rubbing down the muscles or curled up in fetal position, warm in bed. Soreness sucks. Some soreness is good, but what I had was terrible.
Unless you actually injured yourself, your soreness is more than likely caused from lactic acid buildup in your muscles. I'd recommend taking a good quality protein shake & some simple carbs immediately after you workout to help replinish your glycogen levels. This should help you stay out of a catabolic state for a few hours after your workout. L-glutamine is an amino acid and has been said to help with this type of soreness as well so you may want to look into supplementing that into your diet.
I'm just passing along the information I get at work every day. I'm constantly getting new literature discouraging pre-workout stretching and showing that its pre-workout benefits are myths that have been held as true because they have been perpetuated over many years. Nobody here is a paying client of mine, so frankly, I could care less if they use any information I give. The most important thing is to never stretch a muscle when "cold". If you do choose to stretch before you workout, please do a 5-10 minute warmup first, then stretch. Otherwise, YOU ARE RISKING INJURING YOURSELF.
Wow, had no idea, thanks for the info. So what about stretching afterwards? is that recommended? or is it not really a necessity?
Yeah, afterwards is not a bad idea at all. I actually have pretty poor flexibility, so I started on a stretching program this week. We just got a pretty sweet new stretching "cage" delivered to the gym last week, so I've been breaking that in. Anyway, the biggest pain in the butt is staying the extra 15 or so minutes after already doing my workout to do all the flexibility exercises.