A proper knee flexion training will tire your quadriceps and cause sore muscles.
The general principle of strength training is that the development you desire takes place as you train your muscles with sufficient intensity to adapt and grow.
If your knee flexion training is intense enough to make those gains, it will tire your thigh muscles and cause some pain.
Especially for beginners, the effort required for productive weight training makes this pain a bit unavoidable. However, you control certain factors that can accelerate your recovery between workouts.
Why your quadriceps are sore after squats
Strength training and other strenuous exercises can trigger delayed-onset muscle aches that begin to work out about 24 hours after a productive one. It is believed that this pain is caused by micro cracks in the muscle tissues during exercise.
Changing the physical activity or exercising your muscles to fatigue are the most common causes of DOMS. Squats exercise your quadriceps, one of the largest muscle groups in your body.
Normal soreness from strength training seems to be particularly sensitive when you feel it in a muscle group the size of the quadriceps.
Eating and drinking with sore muscles
Contrary to some claims, there may be no magic potion giving DOMS the discomfort. However, soreness is a good indicator of your progress through the regeneration of the workout.
Swelling of the thighs through intense knee flexion training may not be the most comfortable, but this discomfort helps you get two to three days of muscle recovery before returning to squatting in your weekly workout rotation.
Dehydration can make DOMS more uncomfortable, so choosing water and juice over diuretics like caffeine and alcohol can help your recovery. Sports drinks provide sugar to power your muscles.
Warm up and stretching
Stretching and warming up your quadriceps before exercise can increase the elasticity of your muscle tissue and make them more resistant to tissue ruptures.
It is believed that warming up and stretching before exercise can reduce muscle soreness in the days after exercise. It is also believed that activity and stretching during your recovery days can also relieve your sore muscles.
Recovery time
DOMS will kick in 24 to 48 hours after your knee flexion workout or any other significant muscle strain. Your quadriceps will take up to 72 hours after this workout to repair the tissue load caused by strength training.
Some treatments, supplements or nutrients may help alleviate some of the discomforts of DOMS, but your muscles need this two to three day timeline to fully recover from a significant workout.
Attention
You should always seek advice from a qualified professional before trying any remedies or treatments that you are unfamiliar with.
Before changing your physical activity level or exercise program, contact a professional trainer and ask for a personal assessment of your goals and level of performance.
This is especially important for the safety of beginners and for those who are learning how to use new equipment or make new techniques or exercises.
How to Squat when you have Knee Pain
It is a common misconception to believe that the squat should not be performed if you have knee pain. When you have knee pain, in fact, the squat should become your best friend: In fact, it is one of the first exercises to be prescribed during the first phase of knee rehabilitation.
If done correctly, the squat trains the leg muscles and improves balance and coordination. To do the squat when you have knee pain, start with Step 1 below.
Squats and pains: Are they normal? How to avoid them?
You will certainly experience muscle pains after a particular intense workout. Especially with exercises like squats , excellent for training buttocks and legs, it can happen to experience widespread pain in all legs. One of the first questions that arise is whether it is a good thing or not.
It depends! The type of pain varies a lot, some are normal, others just to avoid. Let’s see together which:
Post workout pains
The feeling of heavy legs and aching muscles. The day after going down the stairs becomes a problem? Do you feel like walking like a robot? You are experimenting with the DOMS! Quiet though, it is a physiological adaptation of the body to training.
During your workout the muscles undergo micro fractures. During rest the muscle repairs these micro fractures and grows increasing its volume.
The legs in particular have very impressive muscle bundles and require really intense workouts. The squat is one of the best exercises to train buttocks and legs, needless to deny it, if you want results you have to do things to do the math.
But this is a workout that really goes to stress in an intense way legs and buttocks. To reduce a little pain remember not to neglect the stretching immediately after your training session and to drink a lot. You will see that with constant training your fitness will improve exponentially and the pain will be less intense.
Execution pains
There are pains that are not physiological at all but that are due to poor execution of the exercise. Let’s see together what and how to avoid them.
- Backache: Very often, you can experience pain in the lower back. The lumbar area starts to ache already during your workout and often you do not even know if it is positive and you have to endure because you are a Spartan or if there is something wrong. Well … Stop now! There is nothing positive about lumbar pain due to the squat. The squat is an exercise that allows you to train but is also a functional exercise, or a movement that you happen to do even in everyday life.
- Male joints, knees above all, but also ankles: Even this kind of pain is not at all normal and positive. In 90% of cases (we can even say in 100% once excluded previous diseases in the joints) is due to poor execution.
First of all, let’s say that more and more trainer people prefer the free body squat to the detriment of the multipower squat. This is because it allows an optimal execution of the movements and a more correct posture.
How to avoid pains in the squat
In the free body squat there are tricks that allow you to avoid pains and injuries:
1. Warm up and do not start squat immediately
2. Make sure you have a good flexibility, the squat is not really for everyone. Try to make one free body and see if you can get it done without losing your balance. Many people, after the squatting phase, tend to lose weight and have to force a lot to go back. But this way you can easily lose the correct posture.
3. Position yourself with the legs open at the height of the legs and the tips of the feet slightly outwards in order to favor the natural anatomical movement of the knee.
4. Never bend your back, do not close your shoulders and do not lean forward.
5. Maintain control of the muscles throughout the movement, even during the ascent phase.
6. The muscles must be contracted and buttocks and back must work simultaneously.
7. The knees should not exceed the tips of the feet.
8. During the ascent phase, push on the heels without unbalancing the tips and contract the buttocks.
9. Even the abdominals collaborate to the correct execution of the movement! Remember to keep them well contracted throughout the movement.
10. Help yourself with your arms by bringing them upward at the time of descent. The breathing promotes the contraction of the “core”, inhales during the descent and exhales during the ascent phase.
