What Is Doms (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness)?

What is DOMS?

DOMS stands for Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. It is usually felt 12-72 hours following exercise, and often lasts for around 96 hours, though this can be longer. DOMS is a sensation of soreness, tenderness, and stiffness that can make you feel like you’ve had a productive session - but significant post-exercise soreness can interfere with our following training future sessions if it isn’t managed effectively.

The severity of soreness experienced is a result of a number of factors:

• Familiarity with the exercise: New exercises are more likely to induce DOMS.
• Intensity of the exercise: If a session is more intense (i.e. higher training volume or load), then it will induce greater amounts of muscle damage.
• Eccentric loading: This is when the muscle is contracting while lengthening (e.g. the biceps during the lowering phase of a bicep curl). This type of contraction results in greater amounts of microtears within the muscle fibres. Current research has identified a number of mechanisms responsible for inducing DOMS, although there is not currently a definitive mechanism agreed upon. Mechanical damage of the muscle tissue, inflammation and swelling, and increase in free radical production have all been suggested to contribute to the symptoms associated with DOMS.

Is DOMS Good or Bad?

Feeling DOMS doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve had a good workout, it's simply a sign exercise-induced muscle damage has occurred. The more experienced you are with exercise, the less muscle soreness you will likely experience over time, as your body becomes more familiar with training stimuli. DOMS is associated with greater hypertrophic adaptations. A feeling of post-exercise soreness may be expected in sessions where high volume and intensity are involved. While it’s not essential you feel this way after every session, positive training adaptations are likely to follow.