It always feels great to finish a hard workout. Your heart is pounding, your lungs are recovering from testing the limits of their expansion, sweat is dripping down your forehead, and your elevated mood, self-esteem, and confidence are ringing endorsements of the endorphin rush from exercise.
However, when you push your body during a hard workout, you can create microtears in your muscles that can lead to muscle soreness after exercise. We all want to know how to relieve sore muscles after a workout, or more specifically, how to relieve sore thigh muscles.
Suddenly, the challenge shifts from getting through the workout to figuring out how to relieve sore muscles after exercise quickly. After all, muscle soreness after a workout is not only uncomfortable, but it can also keep you from running or working out again for a few days until the muscle soreness subsides.
In this guide, we will discuss tips for how to relieve sore muscles after exercise and give you some scientifically-proven and anecdotal strategies to reduce muscle soreness after your workout and accelerate muscle recovery.
How to Relieve Sore Muscles After Exercise Fast: Try These 21 Techniques
At one point or another, almost everyone who has stepped foot in a gym or exercised in some way has gotten overzealous or pushed their body hard enough to feel muscle soreness after the workout.
When you find yourself in this position, it’s helpful to know how to relieve sore muscles after exercise fast.
Fortunately, there are quite a few techniques you can use to alleviate sore muscles and promote recovery, some of which are evidence-based and others that are anecdotally said to reduce muscle soreness and are thus popular among athletes of all abilities.
Ready to ease your sore muscles? Here are 21 techniques on how to relieve sore muscles after exercise:
21 techniques on how to relieve sore muscles after exercise
#1: Hydrate
Proper hydration is key to recovery from any workout, and for increasing circulation to muscles and tissues. Aim for 64 ounces per day.
#2: Try an Ice Bath or Ice Pack
Ice baths or the application of ice packs is known as cryotherapy. Many studies have shown that ice baths or cold therapy can decrease muscle soreness and inflammation after exercise.
The cold exposure causes the blood vessels in your submerged legs and hips to constrict. When you get out of the ice bath, these blood vessels dilate rapidly, flushing out the metabolic waste products that can cause delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) and increasing nutritive blood flow.
#3: Turn Up the Heat
While most athletes turn to ice to reduce pain and swelling in the acute phase of an injury or soreness, there’s also evidence to suggest that moist and dry heat therapy can also reduce the severity of DOMS to varying degrees.
Examples of heat therapy for sore muscles include warm bath soaks, infrared saunas, hot tubs or spas, and heating pads.
#4: Walk
Walking is a form of active recovery that can promote blood flow and may be an answer to how to relieve sore muscles after a workout.
#5: Rest Your Body
Rest will allow your muscles time to recover. Although it won’t necessarily expedite recovery, it won’t hurt.
#6: Roll the Pain Away
A foam roller is a self-myofascial release (SMR) tool used to release tension in and increase mobility of your muscles, fascia, and other connective tissue surrounding a joint.
Foam rolling doesn’t physically break up knots in muscles; rather, it stimulates the nervous system to relax tension in the surrounding tissues. Essentially, foam rolling works by sending an input to your nervous system via receptors in your muscles, tendons, and fascia.
As you roll over these soft tissues, the receptors send signals to the spinal cord, and the parasympathetic nervous system responds by sending signals back to the muscles or tissues to relax. In doing so, foam rolling increases the range of motion in muscles and tendons and around joints.
Foam rolling also increases blood flow, aiding the delivery of oxygen and other nutrients to muscles, which can improve the effectiveness of a warmup routine and enhance recovery and removal of metabolic waste products accumulated in muscles after exercise.
So if you’re looking for how to relieve sore muscles after exercise, research has found that foam rolling can do the trick!
#7: Use a Massage Gun
Massage guns, like foam rollers and regular manual massage, can increase circulation and may alleviate sore muscles after a workout.
#8: Sleep
Research has found sleep deprivation can compromise recovery from exercise and contribute to muscle soreness. Aim for 7-10 hours of sleep per night.
#9: Fuel Your Body
Eating nutritious foods can ensure your body has the nutrients it needs to replenish glycogen stores after a hard workout and to repair any muscle damage that occurred.
In fact, research has found that getting enough carbohydrates and protein within 30 minutes after your workout (typically in a 3:1 ratio of carbohydrates to protein) may be one of the best ways to reduce muscle soreness.
#10: Curcumin
Curcumin, an active compound in the spice turmeric, can reduce inflammation and may be useful at relieving sore muscles.
#11: Wear Compression Garments
Although the evidence from scientific studies hasn’t been overwhelmingly conclusive, wearing compression garments like compression socks and compression sleeves may reduce muscle soreness after a workout.
The effectiveness of compression garments seems to be increased if you wear them during the workout.
Even if your workout is already over, it seems like donning a good pair of compression socks certainly won’t hurt. You may just find it’s a helpful way to reduce inflammation in your muscles and relieve muscle soreness.
#12: Drink Tart Cherry Juice
Studies have found that drinking tart cherry juice after exercise can reduce the severity of DOMS by reducing inflammation and muscle damage.
Tart cherry juice can be consumed in concentrate form or can be mixed with water or another beverage, or added to smoothies or oatmeal.
Most research recommends about 1.5-2 ounces of tart cherry juice concentrate per day to reduce muscle soreness and inflammation.
#13: Take a Creatine Supplement
Creatine monohydrate is a popular ergogenic aid, particularly among power athletes and weight lifters.
Not only has creatine supplementation been found to confer gains in muscle size, strength, and power, but evidence also suggests that creatine may promote recovery from a workout by replenishing glycogen stores, repairing muscle damage, and reducing inflammation in the muscles.
#14: Do Active Recovery
When you’re really sore the day after working out, the last thing you might feel like doing more exercise, but there’s evidence to suggest that light exercise, or active recovery, can actually expedite recovery and relieve muscle soreness.
The key to using active recovery to reduce muscle soreness or DOMS is to do a different type of exercise than what you did to cause the soreness in the first place.
In other words, if you experience DOMS after running hill sprints, try gentle cycling, swimming, or some other form of low-intensity, low-impact exercise to promote recovery.
Active recovery increases circulation to your sore muscles, delivering oxygen and nutrients to help repair the microtears. Movement may also help activate the venous pump system; which may reduce swelling in your muscles.
#15: Gentle Stretching
Although the evidence is mixed regarding the effectiveness of stretching after a workout to reduce muscle soreness, there are certainly many athletes who swear by a good post-workout stretch.
Either way, there’s not much to show that gentle stretching will be harmful, so long as you warm up your muscles and don’t push your range of motion.
#16: Massage
If you have the means to get a massage or can recruit a loved one or friend to help you out, massage may relieve sore muscles by promoting circulation of blood and lymph and potentially breaking up muscle adhesions and relaxing trigger points.
In fact, one review that compared the effectiveness of numerous popular techniques to relieve DOMS found that massage was the most effective modality for reducing muscle soreness after exercise.
Essentially, techniques like foam rolling or rolling on a lacrosse ball are forms of self-massage, and can also be beneficial.
#17: Try Essential Oils
Various essential oils have been used in traditional medicinal remedies to relieve muscle soreness and inflammation for many years.
Common essential oils used for sore muscles include eucalyptus oil, peppermint oil, lavender oil, marjoram oil, chamomile oil, yarrow oil, ginger oil, clove oil, rosemary oil, and helichrysum oil.
#18: Invest In Some Recover Boots
Recovery boots, such as Therabody Recovery Air, provide rhythmic, inflation and deflation of the sleeve to promote circulation and muscle recovery. Many elite distance runners swear by these types of recovery boots for managing muscle soreness and using them is a staple on their how to relieve sore muscles after exercise list!
#19: Consider Ginger Chews
There’s evidence to suggest that ginger may help reduce muscle soreness after exercise, so ginger chews, ginger tea, or ground ginger added to your food may help reduce DOMS.
#20: Eat Anti-Inflammatory Foods
Certain foods have been shown to reduce inflammation in the body, so there’s reason to believe that eating these foods may partially alleviate muscle soreness.
Examples of anti-inflammatory foods include fatty fish such as salmon and mackerel, walnuts, blueberries, broccoli, strawberries, spinach, beet greens, dark chocolate, and avocado.
#21: Sip Green Tea
Green tea is packed with polyphenols and antioxidants, which lend anti-inflammatory properties. It also contains caffeine, which can energize you and increase heart rate and circulation, potentially diminishing the discomfort and muscle stiffness associated with DOMS.
What are your top tips for how to relieve sore muscles after exercise? Let us know!
If you are looking to sneak in some post-run stretching and information specifically on how to relieve sore thigh muscles, take a look at some of our stretching guide for quads! We also have calf, hamstring, glute, and IT band stretching guides as well.
