Lactic Acid

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I started back at the gym on Saturday and I had a personal trainer for the day, and lets just say she kicked my ass in the gym LoL. Since than my arms have been really sore and even stiff to a point. I am guessing this is because of lactic acid. So my question is what can I do to help eliminate it from the muscles??I am going back to gym tonight to work out, but I am going to avoid upper body work-outs and focus on the lower body and than soak in the hottub before I leave.Any suggestions would be great!

After i climb Im sometimes so sore and pumped I cant fucking move.There a trick I could show yo uin person for getting unpumped. It has to do with pressure points, I can only get it to work on my forearms though, I havent figured outthe right places for the legs or upper arms. But being as its mostly my forearms that get all pumped its ok, it allows me to keep climbing.The next day I hurt like a dirty bastard. doing the smae movements you did to get sore helps. it speeds releaseing the acid and while ti wont take it away completely it does make it bearable.same motion, less weight, maybe 3 or 4 sets of a couple of reps in each.through out the day make the smae motions with no addition weight.some ibuproferen helps as well.

Well I tried that yesterday and it didn't seem to help much. But of course when the muscles got warmed it, it felt better but once they cooled down again they got so tense. This morning I literally had to roll out of bed because I couldn't pull myself up LoL (God am I weak! LoL). But after a nice HOT shower they lossened but. Not sure how long this is going to last, I just hope sooner than later this lets up lol.

It's not from lactic acid. Lactic acid dissipates (or is metabolized) relatively quickly. They're sore from use (or overuse); you get little tears in the muscles when they're overstressed. If you don't overdo it, that's not a bad thing. If you're really sore, then you used too much weight or did too many reps on some muscles. Is suggests ratcheting back on the weight next time.There's not a lot you can do, other than apply cold compresses (which is something that's good to do right after you know you've overdone it). Aspirin/Advil/etc. might provide some relief. Maybe a very gentle massage of the sore areas, although massage is not a great idea over areas of acute injury.Those sore muscles now need a bit of rest so they can heal. If you keep up the exercises, and don't go crazy with the weights, the soreness will become less of an issue.

Thanks for the info Yesterday I did VERY little upper body lifting, just enough to help stretch the muscles a little. Prior to that though on Saturday I was just following the intruction of the personal trainer. The weights weren't too heavy, but she had me doing fewer reps with more sets. Granted in the past I have never been one to work out my upper body as I have always been 'lower body strong', so all this weight lifting is very new to me lol.Admittingly I am not one who likes to take pills, but this morning I let the doc give me a vicoprofen lol. It has helped some.

> The weights weren't too heavy, but she had me doing fewer reps with more sets.

That sounds good to me. If you stick with it, not only will the soreness stop happening, but you'll also prevent soreness from every-day overexertion. Keeping your back muscles (and front muscles also) in shape helps to protect your back from injury.

Keeping your muscles toned -- it's all good.

It would be a good idea to eat a banana around time of workouts too.

Originally Posted By: websexinfo

It would be a good idea to eat a banana around time of workouts too.

Thanks for the advice :smile:

I wish I knew what to do, I've had people tell me that I should continue to work out my arms even if they hurt because it will make them feel better, and I've had people tell me not to work them out until the pain goes away and than I've had people tell me to only do light lifting until the pain subsides LoL. So lost hehe.

Luckily I know pain is only temporary, but doesn't help me now LoL.

Working them out loosens them up again, but dont do ti like your training them. Just a couple reps, a few sets, very low resistance, its to get them moving, disapate the acid, and return blood flow in stronger porportions to aid in healing the small tears that happen from lifting.

Well I tried that last night but maybe I need to try lightening to weights up some, that could have been my issue.This might be the reason why I never concentrated on my upper body when I was younger LoL

Don't train the same muscles when they're are sore, you'll risk overtraining. You're muscles are hurting as bad as they do because you just started training again. In a few weeks you'll be wishing you could punish yourself as bad as you did when you first started.

OKay so last night I used VERY light weights on the machines I normally use, like 10-20lbs light. By later that night my arms were feeling much better, not perfect but without a doubt better. I had much better rotation and motion. I was actually able to get out of bed this morning without having to roll out LoL. I only have minor tightness/soreness now. Thanks for the advice Chance, it really seemed to do the trick

I wasnt advising him to train those muscles again, only to use them in the same motion that got him sore to begin with.Even no weight in the same slow concentrated movements that were done in the work out to get sore to begin with help.It establishes more blood flow to those muscles and helps them heal.Understand what Im saying? not training those muslces again, just using them in the same motions that they were trained in.I dont know that I can spell it out to make sense to anyone besides me, I hope that this clears up what I was saying.To train them again with out recovery is bad shit, leads to injury, to use them and up the blood flow and oxygen to them though is good for them and speeds teh recovery of being so sore.

Just dont over do it eddie. I apparently didnt make clear what I meant as KMRobins thought I was saying to train them again.
I dont know how to word it so that people who lift all the time understand what Im saying, maybe its the wrong words or different ideas of what train means?
Just use those muscles with little to no weight in te same motions that you did when you were training them.
Up the blood flow, increase oxygen to them.
I dont knwo how to word it so my intent in the advise is clear, but hopefully this post and the one before it do the trick.
If not then maybe someone else can word it better to get the point across.

LOL don't wory I knew exactly what you meant and as I stated above it seemed to work very well.

Your muscles are feeling better because they've had time to recover, they heal whilst you sleep. The extra weighted exercises you did (as light as they may have been) would've done nothing to help your recovery, and may have even slowed it.Honestly, this early in the game it's not worth doing anything fancy. You'll grow no matter what.

Kmrobins is right. Also, you need to get a good night's sleep because that's when your muscles spend their time recovering.

Doing light exercises with them actually helps because it increase blood flow to that part of the body. It isn't such a bad thing to use the same muscle group again after training it, although obviously you'd never want to do two extremely heavy sets in a row.I've done training camps while I did fencing where we'd do 5 days of intense training (with an excellent coach, whom had won a gold medal previously for women's fencing), and it was exceptionally good for my conditioning. It really isn't a bad thing to keep those muscle groups active, although you don't want to do a hard workout then follow it the next day with a hard workout focused on the exact same thing.