Muscle soreness doesn’t just impact the gym-goer who did one too many deadlifts or the runner training for their first marathon. Pro athletes also deal with it—pretty regularly in fact. And the same tool that can help their muscles feel better can also come in clutch for you, too.
Take WNBA players: Lots of game-minutes means lots of time on their feet jam-packed with high-intensity movements—think: tons of running and jumping, quickly changing directions, and coming into contact with other players, which can do a number on their bodies, particularly their knees, quads, hamstrings, and hips, as Katie Buria, ATC, CSCS, the head athletic trainer and rehab lead for the Atlanta Dream, tells SELF. Soreness can also affect players who are actively trying to build muscle (and thus go really hard in the weight room), as well as those who have a history of injury that causes them to compensate in their movement patterns and overload certain areas to the point of soreness.
“It is quite frequently that we’re dealing with it,” Buria says.
The type of soreness we’re talking about is officially called delayed onset muscle soreness, a.k.a. DOMS, which typically creeps in about 12 to 24 hours after a workout. Exercise creates microscopic tears in your muscle tissues, which then triggers an inflammatory process in your body that results in that sore sensation, as SELF previously reported. Doing certain types of exercise—including explosive jumping moves like plyometrics, high-intensity resistance training, and new-to-you forms of movement—are more likely to result in DOMS.
If you’ve ever had it, you probably know the feeling well: Tight, stiff, and achy muscles, which can affect a more diffuse area, rather than laser-focused on one specific spot. (Injury, on the other hand, tends to show up with different signs, like: sharp, stabbing pain in a small area; numbness or tingling; or pain that gets worse with movement.)
And while soreness is part of a pro athlete’s job to a degree—it’d be tricky never to experience it when you push your body hard—finding ways to ease it is crucial. After all, being sore all the time can make it tough to feel and perform your best.
Buria caveats that there are 11 athletes on the Dream, and the strategy for addressing soreness varies person-to-person, since they all respond a little differently to different techniques and have personal preferences, too. But in general, the biggest thing they do to calm their barking bodies is…drumroll…active recovery. More often than not, active recovery days are what they slot in between games and intense practices.
Active recovery is movement that’s less intense than your usual workouts. It can encompass a whole bunch of different activities, from steady-state cycling to yoga to light resistance training. But for the Dream, it’s often centered on gentle pool sessions and Pilates, a form of low-impact exercise that’s all about body alignment, breathwork, and core activation.
