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I'm a 34 year old male. My fitness level is above average, but I won't say it's much more than that.

Unsurprisingly, after intense power workouts, especially after a while of not working on a certain muscle group, I get muscle aches (DOMS) during the recovery phase after the work outs.

What I find to be quite interesting and a relatively new experience for me, is that the day after an intense workout my muscles feel absolutely fine! Perhaps a little weak, but certainly not sore or achy. It's only TWO days after the workout when I start getting muscle pain and stiffness.

In comparison, when I was in my teens, my muscles would usually start to hurt about 12-24 hours after a similar workout.

I'm curious, what changed in my body, and in the process my body recovers from a workout that affects and delays the onset of muscle pain and stiffness.

If I had to guess, I would actually expect being older would mean pain and stiffness would appear sooner rather than later, so what's happening?

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  • Hi Michael! I took the liberty of removing the "any thoughts?" finisher. As a rule, we don't allow open-ended questions. We require questions to be phrased in a way that doesn't invite opinionated answers, as we also expect answers to be based in, and documentable by science.
    – Alec
    Aug 30, 2022 at 20:44
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    "A muscle cramp is a sudden and involuntary contraction of one or more of your muscles." Is this what you are experiencing or are you talking about DOMS: "Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is the pain and stiffness felt in muscles several hours to days after unaccustomed or strenuous exercise."?
    – Andy
    Aug 31, 2022 at 12:46
  • The latter. Let me correct my post. Thanks
    – Michael Seltenreich
    Aug 31, 2022 at 15:38
  • Usually I do my normal amount of exercise of 4 sets and feel sore 1 day and 2 days later. Ocassionally I go overboard and do 6 or 7 sets and do not feel sore before 2 and 3 days later. I am guessing that my muscles are in pain the first day also but that my body is producing endorphines that is masking the pain. The more volume (sets) I do the longer the delay before the soreness. The older one get (I am 49) the harder it is to recover from volume. If you want to train more often you should reduce the volume (number of sets).
    – Andy
    Aug 31, 2022 at 18:08
  • Do you have any resources you can link or are you just guessing? I'm trying to understand the biological processes at play.
    – Michael Seltenreich
    Aug 31, 2022 at 19:23

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