What Soreness Really Says About Your Workouts
Today’s episode is inspired by a question I got from a member of the Movement with Julie community. And I love this question because I know so many of you have probably wondered the exact same thing—especially if you’re newer to strength training.
Someone asked me whether they should increase weight or reps because they don’t always feel sore after working out. Such a good question—and we’re breaking it all down today.
Because there’s a really common belief out there that if you’re not sore after your workout, it didn’t work. But here’s the truth:
Soreness does not equal success.
What I discuss:
1. Soreness is Triggered by Novelty, Not Necessarily Effectiveness
2. Soreness Reflects Inflammation, Not Muscle Growth
3. Being Sore Doesn’t Mean You’re Targeting the Right Muscle Effectively
4. The Body Adapts Quickly (And That’s a Good Thing!)
5. Chasing Soreness Can Lead to Overtraining, Not Progress
6. The Importance of Progressive Overload
Also, don’t forget to listen to:
Episode 13: How Much Weight Should I be Lifting? https://www.juliealedbetter.com/embrace-your-real/how-much-weight-should-i-be-lifting
And episode 68: Getting Off Your Fitness Plateau with Progressive Overload https://www.juliealedbetter.com/embrace-your-real/getting-off-your-fitness-plateau-with-progressive-overload
If you want more from me, be sure to check out...
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Website: www.juliealedbetter.com
Get my eBook: FREE Macro Counting Ebook
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Transcript
00:00 -
Hey, hey, beautiful human, Can I steal five minutes of your time? I have something super important to share with you, but I promise I'll be really quick. You're listening to my weekly bonus episode of Embrace your Real with me, julie Ledbetter. I'm about to give you a quick tip for building your confidence, honoring your body and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned If you're ready to embrace your real, let's get it. Let's go. Hello and welcome back to another episode on the Embrace your Real podcast. I'm so grateful that you're here. Whether you're getting your steps in, you're driving to work, you're folding laundry. Thanks for hanging out with me today.
00:40
In today's episode this was actually inspired by a question that I got from a subscriber inside the Movement With Julie community and I love this question because I know so many of us have probably wondered the exact same thing, especially if you're newer to strength training or if you're just coming back to it and you like kind of forgot what you learned previously. Maybe that was, you know, prior to having kids and you've just been in a season of you know, maybe three, five, 10 years, whatever it is of getting back to it, that you've been out of the loop and now you're getting back into it, but the question that came in was okay. So I have a newbie question I'm hoping someone can answer. When I'm doing my workout, I feel it in my muscles, but there's no burn when I'm done. I've only had a few days in the last six weeks where I've actually felt sore afterward. Does that mean that I need to increase my weights or rep? And this is such a good question. And so in today's episode, we're going to be breaking it all down, because there really is a common belief out there that if you're not sore after your workout, it didn't work. But the truth is, soreness does not actually equal success, and so that's exactly what we're going to be diving into in today's episode.
01:39
But before we dive in, I want to share this review. It comes from Jojo Castillo. She gave a five-star review and said fun and real talk. I learned something new during every episode, from understanding macros to building a consistent lifestyle with my fitness journey. Julie keeps it real and raw, no filters and straight to the point. Thank you so much for this review. I really, really appreciate it, and thank you so much for taking time out of your day to send in this review. Again, if you could scooch over to Apple Podcasts and leave a rating and review. That would mean the absolute world to me and our team Just kind of know how this podcast is helping you in general.
02:13
Okay, so first I want to be super clear on this, because being sore after workout can really feel satisfying, right Like it feels like whoa. That was proof that I just worked really hard and there's nothing wrong with enjoying that feeling every once in a while. But let's really unpack this, because I know the whole soreness doesn't equal success thing can really feel like counterintuitive, especially when so many of us have been conditioned to believe that the more sore that we are, the more progress that we're making. But here's the reality muscle soreness, or DOMS, which is delayed onset muscle soreness, is which is delayed onset. Muscle soreness is simply just an inflammatory response and that's it. It's your body reacting to something that it wasn't fully prepared for. And while soreness can sometimes happen after a good, challenging workout, it is not a reliable or necessary marker of progress.
02:56
Number one soreness is actually triggered by novelty, not necessarily effectiveness. The number one reason that you might feel sore after a workout isn't because it was better or because you worked harder. Instead, it's because you did something new or different, whether that's a new exercise that your body hasn't adapted to yet a change in reps, ranges, angles, tempo, a higher eccentric loading, the lowering phase of the lift, whenever your muscles experience this unfamiliar tension, especially in that eccentric phase, where that is where they really generate the micro tears in the muscle fibers, and your immune system responds to that damage with inflammation and that's what creates that sore feeling. But here's the key Once your body actually adapts to that exercise, you probably won't feel as sore doing it again. Or if you're lifting heavier, even if you're getting stronger. So if soreness were the marker of effectiveness, that would mean that the second, third or fourth weeks of programming aren't working because your body is no longer reacting to the soreness. But that's just not how the physiology works, right, your muscles don't need to be sore to be growing. They need progressive overload, and more on that in a second.
04:07
But number two soreness actually reflects inflammation, not muscle growth. So, again, like I mentioned earlier, soreness is a sign of inflammation, not necessarily muscle growth, muscle growth or hypertrophy. That happens when your body repairs those tiny micro tears caused by the tension on the muscle fibers. But the amount of soreness that you feel is not directly correlated to how much muscle damage occurred or how much muscle growth will happen. In fact, severe soreness can actually impair your ability to recover or train consistently, like if your muscles are so sore that you're skipping workouts, you're moving less or you're just not training those muscles again for another week. That can actually hold you back in your progress. Hypertrophy and strength gains require this frequent stimulation of the muscle groups, not blowing them out once and being too sore to move them the rest of the week.
05:00
Number three being sore doesn't mean that you're targeting the right muscles effectively. This is another big one, because sometimes people always chase that burn or the soreness in a workout, but the discomfort that they're feeling might not even be coming from the muscle that they think they're working. It could be from compensating muscles kicking in because of poor form, it could be ligaments or connective tissues getting irritated during your working out, your lifting, or it could be inflammation in tendons, not muscle tissue itself. So if your goal is to build strong glutes, for example, but your soreness is in all of your lower back the next day, that's not a sign of success. That's actually a sign that something was off in your mechanics of the movement. Soreness can actually be misleading because it doesn't necessarily tell you whether the right muscles were challenged appropriately. Good form, proper activation and progressive overload tells you that, not how sore you feel.
05:55
Number five the body adapts quickly, and that's actually a good thing. Another reason soreness isn't a reliable marker of success is that your body adapts quickly to repeated movements, and this is called repeated bout effect, which simply just means that after your muscles have experienced a particular stressor once, they become more efficient at repairing and protecting against the same stressor the next time. So even if you are progressively overloading, if you're lifting heavier, if you're increasing reps, if you're slowing your tempo, you may not feel the same level of soreness, and that's actually a sign that your body is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. If soreness was required for growth, adaptation would work against your results, but it doesn't. Adaptation is the process that really allows you to get stronger without constantly being wrecked.
06:45
And last but not least, number five chasing soreness can actually lead to overtraining, not progress. So if you're constantly chasing, soreness can actually lead to overtraining, not progress. So if you're constantly chasing soreness as your primary measure of whether your workout was good, here's kind of what happens. You switch up exercises too often, not allowing your body to progressively adapt to any one movement. You add too much volume too quickly, you increase your risk of injury or joint stress. You neglect recovery because you're too focused on fatigue and feeling it instead of the smart programming, and the result is inconsistent progress, burnout or frustration. The body doesn't build muscle or improve progress or performance when it's chronically inflamed or overtrained. It actually improves when it's consistently challenged and properly recovered. So if soreness isn't the goal, what actually is the goal? The real magic of strength training comes from progressive overload, which simply just means gradually increasing the challenge on your muscles over time.
07:44
So this could be increasing your weights, adding more reps or sets, adjusting your tempo to increase that time under tension, improving that range of motion or control with each rep. So let me kind of give you an example. If your program calls for, let's say, 10 to 12 reps of goblet squats and you're cruising through those reps with perfect form and you feel like you could easily go for another five or six more, that's a sign that it's time to make that exercise harder. You have three main levers to pull here. Number one you increase that weight If you're hitting the top of that rep range and it feels very easy, try to bump up your weight five to 10%. So, for example, if you're squatting with 20 pound dumbbells, try with 22.5 or 25 pounds. The second lever is add more reps. So if you can't increase your weight yet maybe you're working with limited equipment at home you can add an extra rep or two per set or per round Once you're consistently hitting that higher end of the rep range. That's your green light to go heavier next time. And the third lever is adjust your tempo. So if weight and reps are staying the same, slow the movement down, especially the lowering, the eccentric phase. So try taking, you know, three to four seconds on the way down, pausing at the bottom and then pressing up. This boosts that time under tension and it makes the same weight. So even if you're you know you're staying at that 20 pound dumbbells that you've been at, that actually makes the same weight feel significantly harder.
09:17
Remember that the goal is to challenge your muscles enough that they adapt and they grow stronger, but not so much that you're wiped out and constantly sore. And one other piece to consider is form and range of motion. So sometimes the reason a workout feels too easy, isn't that? The weight is too light? It might be that you're not fully maximizing the movement. So asking yourself am I controlling the movement or am I rushing through it? Am I moving through that full range of motion and am I using momentum or are my muscles actually doing the work? Even these small tweaks, like sinking a little bit deeper into that goblet squat, or pausing at the bottom of a row or whatever it is in a bicep curl, you're pausing and then you're exploding up. Whatever it is that can make a huge difference in how challenging the exercise feels without needing to change your weights or reps.
10:10
So if you're listening to this and you're wondering, okay, I don't know whether it's time to actually increase my weights or reps, I kind of want you to follow this action plan. Start tracking the weights, reps, the tempo that you're using for each exercise. It's really hard to know if you're progressing if you're not writing it down, if you're not tracking it. The second thing is, if you're hitting the top of your rep range easily, with great form, bump the weight slightly or add those extra reps. And, last but not least, number three, if you're limited on weight right now, experiment with slowing down the tempo on the next workout and notice how your muscles respond. If you're following along inside Moomoo Julie, inside my Dumbo Only Weekly Workout group, remember that I program these principles right into the workouts.
10:54
But it's really up to you to stay connected to how your body feels. If you're breezing through two rounds, add that third round or fourth round or fourth set or whatever it is. If you're short on time but you really want to make those two or three rounds more intense, slow the tempo down, stay intentional. Maybe add some weight if you have access to that. But it's really again, it's really about staying connected to how your body feels and just knowing that there are different strategies that you can implement to implement that progressive overload into the weekly workout. So, whether that's you know, definitely start by tracking your weights, like I mentioned. Also, if that is something that you're already doing and you're like, okay, I'm hitting the top of that rep range every single time, it's super easy for me, I don't have the ability to add extra weight because I don't have that at home, then I would encourage you to change out the tempo. If you do have access to higher weights, then maybe bump the rep range down and really be intentional with those eight reps instead of 10 reps or 12 reps.
11:56
That's programmed, but I do have two episodes that I need you to listen to, where I really dive into these things and these topics in a way deeper manner. First is kind of an OG episode, it's episode 13, how much weight should I be lifting? And then also be sure to check out episode 68, getting off your fitness plateau with progressive overload. I really do dive into both of that, into that topic, into a deeper manner. So, all that to say, though, the magic is really again how you show up and how you challenge yourself, not in whether or not you're sore the next day, and I'll kind of leave you with this today.
12:30
Soreness can feel like a badge of honor sometimes, but it's not the best measure of success. What matters more is are you challenging yourself progressively? Are you showing up and moving with control and good form? And, last but not least, are you showing up consistently, even if the burn isn't there, because the goal isn't to be the sorest person in the room. The goal is to be the strongest, most capable, most energized version of yourself, and that, my girl, comes from progressive overload, not punishment. So if you're ready to stop chasing soreness and really just start focusing on what actually helps to build that strength and see results. Again, that's exactly what we do inside the Moot with Julie community, inside my Dumbo Only Weekly Workout group.
13:15
Every workout that I create is built around these principles, these progressive overload opportunities, the smart programming, consistent, intentional movement not punishment, not random soreness, not hustle culture. If you're tired of wondering if your workouts are enough, if you're feeling like you have to wreck your body to make that progress, just come join us. You'll get a clear structure. You'll get the options to challenge yourself at the right level for you, whether that's adding reps, that's increasing weight, that's dialing in your tempo. You can head to sale that's S-A-L-Emovmentjuliecom to gain instant access, or you can simply just click the link in the show notes. Again, do not forget to tune into the two episodes that I mentioned earlier episode 13, how much weight should I be lifting? And episode 68, getting off your fitness plateau with progressive overload.
14:04
If this episode cleared up some confusion for you today, would you do me a favor and share it with a friend who might also need this same reminder? And if you also have not left a review yet or maybe you haven't left a review in a while. I'd love for you to do that. It really does help get these messages out to more women who need to hear them. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for showing up for yourself, and I will see you in the next one. Until then, embrace your real Love. You so dang much.
14:38
All right, sister, that's all I got for you today, but I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you are not already following me on the gram, be sure to do so. Julie A Ledbetter yes, it's with an A in the middle for that daily post-workout real talk, healthy tips and tricks and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world, and I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace a room, because you're worth it.