Feeling some sore muscles after yesterday’s workout?

Those sore muscles are part of your body’s process of rebuilding and strengthening after killing your workout!

But don’t allow those sore muscles to be an excuse for skipping today’s workout. Consistency is the key to your transformation. So if muscle soreness is holding you back from regularly crushing you workouts, here are my best nine tips for easing the pain:

1. Water

Dehydration enhances the pain of your sore muscles, so stay hydrated!

If you feel thirsty, that means you’re already dehydrated. Be proactive about staying hydrated by consistently sipping on water throughout your entire day.

Staying hydrated not only helps reduce muscle soreness, but also helps speed up your metabolism and digestion, and burn more fat. Plus it helps you get rid of extra water weight, and reduces inflammation and bloating. And an added bonus, it’s going to greatly increase your energy levels! Awesome, right?

If you’re working up a sweat daily, a great starting point and general rule of thumb for how much water you should drink daily is half your body weight in ounces.

For example, I’m 140 pounds, which means I need to drink at least 70 ounces of water daily. This is equivalent to a little over 2 liters of water that I need to drink each day.

2. Active Recovery

It may seem like an oxymoron, but moving your muscles more is extremely beneficial for getting rid of those sore muscles!

Let me explain…

Lactic acid is a big reason why you feel sore after your workouts. You know when you’re working out super hard and you can barely breathe? Yeah, well your body needs oxygen to break blood sugar down into usable energy. When you don’t have enough oxygen, your body produces lactic acid to help the process. Which is great, but the downside is that your body produces the lactic acid way faster than you’re able to burn it off. So the leftovers gets stored in your muscles, which then causes the unwanted post-workout soreness.

This soreness makes you want to stay on the couch all day and recover, but actually getting in some active recovery, or low-intensity exercise, can be way more beneficial! It helps to break up all that built-up lactic acid and clear it away.

Active recovery is anything that is at a steady rate, and you could hold a conversation while doing it. Some great examples would be a light yoga class, an easy jog, a leisurely bike ride, a brisk walk, or some pilates.

3. Branch Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs)

One of the best ways to be proactive about reducing your muscle soreness is by supplementing with branch chain amino acids, or BCCAAs, prior to your workout.

You probably already know how our bodies require protein to build muscle, right?

Well, amino acids are the building blocks of protein, which means our bodies actually need amino acids to build muscle.

There are 21 different amino acids, although nine are considered essential, as our bodies do not produce them on their own. Out of the nine, three of these essential amino acids are referred to as BCAAs.

What’s so special about these BCAAs?

Typically, amino acids have to go to your liver first to be broken down before they can get sent to your muscles to help build and repair So what makes BCAAs so special is that they’re able to go directly into your muscles, skipping the liver altogether, which helps speed up your recovery process.

Plus, since BCAAs go directly to your muscles, if you supplement before working out, it will help decrease the amount of protein that gets broken down during your workout. This minimizes the damage you do to your muscles, which also minimizes the time it takes for your muscles to recover.

Quicker recovery equals less sore muscles. Perfect, right?

The most effective way to get in your BCAAs is by using a supplement like this one here. (If you want to try it out, you can use code JULIE to save you $$$!)

4. CBD and Other Anti-Inflammatories

Inflammation is your body’s protection mechanism. When you’re working out, you’re tearing your muscle fibers, which triggers your body to protect itself by becoming inflamed. The muscle soreness you’re experiencing is due to inflammation within your muscles.

This is why anti-inflammatories are so effective in helping to reduce the pain from your sore muscles.

My first pick for an anti-inflammatory is CBD. No, it won't get you high and no, you shouldn’t be afraid to use it! It’s gentle enough to be part of a daily health regimen, while strong enough to keep your body in balance.

CBD comes in many forms, although I love to use the liquid kind. About 15 minutes before I go to sleep (after brushing my teeth), I place a few drops under my tongue, wait 60 seconds and then swallow. Whenever I do this, I always wake up in the morning with my muscles feeling super fresh!

Proper dosage for each person varies. Many experts suggest starting at a low dosage, around 10mg, and slowly working your way up until you find the amount that works best for you.

You can learn more about how to use CBD and how to select the right kind, plus find out which brand of CBD I love to use, by checking out this post.

Turmeric is another great anti-inflammatory that will greatly help reduce the feeling of sore muscles! Well, to be more exact, it’s actually the curcumin it contains that works wonders.

Adding a splash of turmeric to your latte or soup isn’t going to do the trick. To get enough curcumin to reap the benefits, you’ll need to eat an entire tablespoon of turmeric. That’s why it’s a lot easier to take it in supplement form. You’ll want to find a supplement that provides you with 500mg of curcumin to effectively reduce your sore muscles.

There are many other anti-inflammatories you can begin to incorporate into your daily diet like omega-3s, ginger, green tea and cinnamon.

5. Magnesium

Did you know 20-30% of people are magnesium deficient? And did you also know being deficient could be causing your muscle soreness?

Remember how I chatted about lactic acid earlier? Well, a lack of magnesium will cause a greater buildup of lactic acid in your muscles, which will increase your muscle soreness.

Plus, magnesium is an electrolyte that plays an important role in many different processes in your body, and repairing and growing your muscles is one of them. Which means, if you‘re working out regularly and experiencing sore muscles regularly, you’ll want to make sure you’re giving your body enough magnesium.

So how much magnesium do you need a day? The majority of health experts agree that consuming somewhere around 500mg of magnesium will be your sweet spot.

Magnesium comes in supplement form, which is probably the easiest way to know you’re getting enough each day. I suggest supplementing at night as magnesium also helps to increase the quality of your sleep.

You can also find magnesium creams. This is perfect for directly targeting that sore muscle post-workout.

As beneficial as these two ways are, you always want to make sure you’re getting your micronutrients through your diet as well. So I highly suggest regularly incorporating magnesium-rich foods into your diet. Foods high in magnesium include dark leafy greens, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, almonds, cashews, pecans, walnuts, brown rice, avocado, beans, raw cacao and edamame.

6. Rest

At some point, rest is the answer for reducing your muscle soreness. If you crushed five or six days of workouts in a row, and you feel like you can barely move, your body needs rest!

You need to prioritize at least one rest day a week to avoid overtraining.

It’s so common for people to think if they work out more, they’ll see better results. But more is not always better.

When working out, you’re actually breaking your muscle down. So when you work out every single day and never rest properly, you’re in a chronic catabolic state. This means you’re in a chronic state of muscle breakdown and your body is never working to build itself up.

Plain and simple, your body needs rest to repair and grow.

So that perpetual muscle soreness is your body is a sign that you need a break! Without a break you’ll cause your body to experience the many negative effects of overtraining.

Overtraining leads your cortisol levels to skyrocket. And when those levels are chronically high, it increases your appetite and food cravings, slows your digestion and metabolism, and causes other serious hormonal imbalances and health issues. I’ll take a rest day, thank you!

7. Foam Roll

When someone has really tight muscles, I always here them say they need to stretch more. While stretching is amazing, I think foam rolling is extremely overlooked and is an amazing way to reduce muscle soreness.

Why is it so helpful?

You have connective tissue surrounding your muscles, called muscle fascia. Many times we think our muscles are tight, but it’s actually our fascia. Overworking a muscle will cause the surrounding fascia to tighten, as a way to try to protect the muscle. And oftentimes it’s that tight fascia that’s causing you to experience muscle soreness. And foam rolling will help smooth out that fascia, reducing your feeling of soreness.

When foam rolling, most people will roll back and forth over the muscle that’s causing them pain. While this feels amazing, this isn’t actually the most beneficial way to make use of your foam roller.

When foam rolling, you want to roll over the muscle that is sore very slowly, about an inch per second. Once you find that trigger point where you feel the most pain, you’ll want to hold there for a good 20-30 seconds. Take deep breathes while holding. And with every exhale try to release a little bit more of your body weight into the roller, releasing the muscle more. After holding for about 20-30 seconds, continue rolling down the muscle, an inch per second, until you find another trigger point and repeat.

8. Warm Up

Do you just go straight to your workout without performing any movements to warm your body up first? Not only does warming up decrease your risk of injury and increase your range of motion, but it also helps reduce your feelings of muscle soreness.

A warmup is always a great idea regardless of how your muscles are feeling, but if you’re going into a workout feeling sore, a warmup is essential! It will help you heat and loosen up your tight muscles before you get into the workout. I promise with a warmup, you’ll experience a much more effective workout every single time.

I would spend five-to-ten minutes doing some sort of light movement before you get into your actual workout. This could be a brisk walk on the treadmill, a light spin on the bike or going at an easy pace on the elliptical.

I personally prefer to warm up by performing a mini circuit made up of light movements. My favorites include jumping jacks, butt kickers, half squats, and arms circles. I’ll do each movement for 30 seconds, repeating for three rounds. No matter how sore my muscles are, after my warmup I always feel ready to go.

9. Embrace it!

Be excited about feeling sore!

Experiencing muscle soreness is a clear sign you’ve been challenging your body and pushing it past its comfort zone. Both are so important for seeing change in your body and building the body you want.

If you stop feeling sore, you need to question whether or not you’re pushing yourself hard enough. If you always do the same workouts at the same intensity, your body will soon adapt. It will no longer need to build more muscle to keep up with the stress you’re placing on it.

Without constantly placing new stresses and challenges on your body, your body won’t continue to transform.

It’s a part of the journey, so embrace it!

If you regularly experience sore muscles, download my free checklist: 9 Tips to Relieve Your Muscle Soreness.

What type of workout makes you feel the most sore? Let me know in the comments below!

9 Quick and Easy Tips to Relieve Your Muscle Soreness