DOMS, what is that?

DOMS or, Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, is the acronym we give to the feeling your muscles have the next day or maybe even two days after a really great or really strenuous workout. For most of us, DOMS is exactly what we need to tell us that our time in the gym was well spent. Do we need to feel sore to get results? No, there are a lot of ways to program a workout so that you don't get sore and it certainly isn't mandatory to see health benefits. Being sore is also nothing to be wary of. That is your body rebuilding itself to make it stronger.
Let's talk for a second about why we actually get sore. The basic component of EVERY single muscle in your body is built up of a bunch of strands wrapped around each other. These strands are called myofilaments. These myofilaments wrap around each other to form myofibrils (last fancy word I promise) which is what actually gives muscle that striated or strand-upon-strand look. If you lay all of the fingers of your right hand in the spaces between all the fingers of your left hand this is exactly how those filaments are layered in muscle. When we do any sort of weight training or even any sort of aerobic exercise we actually tear those filaments. It isn't a bad thing to do this because your body will actually come back and repair itself making that muscle bigger and stronger which can be seen by the eye over time because we get bigger arms, legs, shoulders, back etc. This rebuilding process is also why we have found that muscle confusion is really the only way we keep seeing strength gains. Your muscle rebuilds itself so to protect it from getting torn in the same way. So when we take a rest from our workout due to DOMS it is important to come back to the gym with a different work out in mind because your body has already prepared itself and you won't get any more results from the same old workout.