Soreness = Progress? - Training Day Gym Educational Article

SORENESS = PROGRESS?

Some people hate the soreness after a workout, some people love it and some will determine how good or hard their workout was dependent on their soreness the following day.

Yes you should definitely be aware of how you’re body’s recovering from your workouts. However the soreness post workout aka DOMS shouldn’t be the main measuring stick that determines your progress.

The best way to make progress is to track what you’re doing in your workouts and a simple way to track your progress is using measures such as Volume Load.

Volume Load is simply the amount of volume of work you complete (sets x reps) multiplied by the loads you used (weight).

When we look at a training program, in most scenarios, particularly when just getting started in the gym the volume load should be increasing regularly.

So if we looked at a 3 week block of Back Squats for example.
Week 1
2 sets x 12 reps (volume) @ 50kg (load) = 1200kg
Week 2
3 sets x 10 reps (volume) @ 57.5g (load) = 1725kg
Week 3
4 sets x 8 reps (volume) @ 65 kg (load) = 2080kg

Now if this was a new program, and we were tracking our soreness levels, we would likely have the most amount of soreness after the first session. Why? because the body is simply not used to doing it.

However over the course of the 3 weeks the amount of DOMs accumulated after the session will likely lessen, yet the volume load has increased massively.

The point is to make sure you’re tracking your training and not solely relying on how sore you are after your workouts.

By Coach Luke Riley