Soreness...DOMS?

Question

Before I start off I do apologise if this is an obvious question, however I am new to this so bear with me :)

I have started getting myself back into shape lately. Yesterday I started with a 20 minute strength training workout using a pair of 5kg dumbbells consisting of:- seesaw rows, dumbbell squats, dumbbell shoulder press, calf raises, bicep curls, chest press, overhead tricep extensions & upright rows

After the workout I had some muscle weakness which is to be expected, but no soreness. I was eating right before and after the workout watching the protein intake and staying hydrated throughout.

This morning when I woke up I have soreness/stiffness in my hamstrings/backs of thighs, crease of my arms(inner elbow) and my traps?

Is this DOMS or have I injured these areas, as looking at other places there seems to be a lot of mixed information regarding this.

Thanks for reading and for any help, greatly appreciated :)

Answer 1

The soreness and stiffness at the back of your legs, and the pain in your traps, likely is DOMS. It happened in about the right timeframe and it's muscles that you'd expect to be using with those exercises. Pain on the inside of the elbow is slightly more likely to be tendonitis, specifically something like Golfer's Elbow (the flipside of Tennis elbow where the pain is on the outside). You can often tell that one because it hurts considerably more when you try to straighten your arm.

The DOMS is of minor concern so long as it doesn't prevent you from being able to keep moving the next day. If it is tendonitis, that's slightly more worrying, because it can be a precursor to more permanent damage if you continue overstressing those tendons, but honestly, it's pretty common with dumbbell bicep curls when you're starting out.