Acute muscle soreness

Acute muscle soreness is the pain felt in muscles during and immediately after strenuous physical exercise. The pain appears within a minute of contracting the muscle and disappears within two or three minutes^[1] or up to several hours^[2] after relaxing it.

The following causes have been proposed for acute muscle soreness:

• Accumulation of chemical end products of exercise in muscle cells, such as H^+[2]
• Tissue edema caused by the shifting of blood plasma into the muscle tissue during contraction^[2]
• Muscle fatigue (the muscle tires and cannot contract any more)^[3]

Acute muscle soreness is one form of exercise-induced muscle damage, the other being delayed onset muscle soreness, which appears between 24 and 72 hours after exercise.

References

1. Michael Kjaer, Michael Krogsgaard, Peter Magnusson, Lars Engebretsen, Harald Roos, Timo Takala, Savio Woo (2008). Textbook of Sports Medicine: Basic Science and Clinical Aspects of Sports Injury and Physical Activity. John Wiley and Sons. p. 722. ISBN 978-1-4051-4057-7.
2. Jack H. Wilmore, David L. Costill, W. Larry Kenney (2008). Physiology of sport and exercise. Human Kinetics. p. 213. ISBN 978-0-7360-5583-3.
3. Springhouse Corporation (2000). Physical therapist's clinical companion. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. p. 265. ISBN 978-1-58255-004-6.