Combat Aches & Pains with Exercise

While massage is commonly believed to be the best modality for relieving muscle soreness, emerging evidence suggests that actively warming up the muscles with exercise may be an effective alternative.  Lars L. Andersen, from the National Research Center for the Working Environment (The Netherlands), and colleagues recruited 20 women to do a shoulder exercise while on a resistance machine.  The women shrugged their shoulders while the machine applied resistance, which engaged the trapezius muscle between the neck and shoulders.  Two days later, the women came back to the lab with aching trapezius muscles, and they received a 10-minute massage on one shoulder and did a 10-minute exercise on the other shoulder. The exercise again involved shoulder shrugs; this time the women gripped an elastic tube held down by their foot to give some resistance. The team found that, as compared to the shoulder that wasn’t getting any attention, massage and exercise each helped diminish muscle soreness.  The effect peaked 10 minutes after each treatment, with women reporting a reduction in their pain of 0.8 points after the warm up exercise and 0.7 points after the massage. The study authors write that: “Coaches, therapists and athletes can use either active warm-up or massage to reduce [delayed onset muscle soreness]  acutely, e.g. before competition or strenuous work, but should be aware that the effect is temporary, i.e. the greatest effects occurs during the first 20 min after treatment and diminishes within an hour.”