Strength athletes and bodybuilders often equate delayed onset muscular soreness with progress in strength or muscle hypertrophy. This equation does not hold true, the real relationship between training, soreness and progress is as follows:
Training can provide a stimulus for progress.
Training can induce Delayed Onset Muscular Soreness (DOMS).
Different training means have different effects on short and long term training effects.
Soreness does not equal progress.
Progress is not reliant upon soreness.
Soreness and progress can coincide, but there is not a causal relationship between them. Sometimes the training means that induce soreness also happen to be the same ones that provide a stimulus for progress in strength /hypertrophy at a particular time. Alas, this is not always the case or training would be a simple case of making yourself sore, waiting for the soreness to go away, and then making yourself sore again. This “single factor” approach to progression fails to take in to account that although maximal efforts are not possible during recovery periods, sub-maximal efforts are possible and can play a useful part in enhancing progress further still.
Training means that are well known for inducing soreness include emphasised eccentric (negative) movements, sudden increases in training volume of a given body part or lift and the introduction of a novel exercise that you have not performed for a long period of time. Obviously at some point in an athletes training negative emphasis movements, increases in training volume and the use of novel stimuli can all play a part in generating renewed progress, but the key is to utilise these means at the correct time and in the correct context. Merely using them to generate DOMS is pointless.
The problem with training means that are designed to cause soreness is simply that they can hinder further training in the short term and that eventually hinders long term progress in strength. Admittedly this is more prevalent in beginning or intermediate athletes, most Elite / sub-elite athletes are conditioned to training despite muscular soreness and fatigue although this rarely comes from deliberate attempts to cause DOMS.
I feel the same way about training means that are deliberately designed to cause exhaustion / fatigue (eg training to failure, forced reps, drop sets etc).
These means can be used effectively from time to time and are perhaps worthwhile when working with low loading schedules / low training frequencies but if these means substantially reduce the athletes training frequency then the possible benefits are often negated. There is an old axiom that says “You can train hard or you can train long...but you can’t train hard for long” that is often used to promote so called “High Intensity Training (HIT)”. A more useful axiom would be “You can train to create soreness and fatigue, or you can train often, but you can’t train to create soreness and fatigue often”. Both methodologies are of value, at the correct time and in the correct context, but this is a classic example of the conflict between maximising training frequency and fatigue caused by training reducing training frequency.
