For injuries, especially bruise and sprain type injuries, use ice for the first hour or two, then massage and heat.
DOMS and general training soreness is different and hot/cold as described before is good.
I remembering reading in Flex that carbs after a workout are good…that was a few years ago and I know they are always finding out new stuff…but I know from experience that rice or pasta after a workout seems to help speed up recovery…I also find that a sauna after a workout helps with muscle soreness…that and the more bodyparts you train the more you will spread out the lactic acid…
Cause of Muscle Soreness
Delayed onset mouscle soreness is not only due to build up of lactic acid. A doctor Dinghou Lu from Beijing did research, inluding biopsy of muscle tissue that showed that the soreness is due to the misalignment of muscle fibers. Thin and thick muscle fibers normally contract and relax around a “Z” line. After strenuos exercise Doctor Lu found that the Z Line changes shape and moves causing an inability of muscle fibers to properly contract and relax around that line. His experiment showed how acupuncture realigns the Z Line with the fibers, but also suggested that massage, stretching, and heat work similarly.
Considering that DOMS is a mystery to just about everybody (as in, why it really occurs and what it really is) I’d love to see this research. Can you link up any evidence of these trials?
Carbs certainly help recovery as the carbs in the muscle are used up by exercise and need to be replaced. A good option is a low acid fruit juice like grape juice directly after training to boost carbs quickly, then a good solid meal within an hour of training.
I can’t link it because I don’t think it’s online. I have the literature so I could scan it and email it if you like, but you’ll have to wait till early next week for it.
I read something online by an American doctor who said DOMS was caused by tiny tears in the muscle tissue and that recovery was actually the healing of these tears.
Yeah, well that’s one of the more accepted theories, but it’s only a theory. If you get around to scanning the article, let us know.