The answer to your first question is no, muscle soreness is not necessarily indicative of a productive training session. High intensity movements (closer to 1RM), or movements with limited eccentric (lowering) phase will likely not make you very sore.awa54 wrote:Interpreting muscle soreness...
I only very infrequently experience muscle soreness, either when exercising or doing hard physical work. My question is this; should a good exercise session cause sore muscles? if so how how intense would that soreness be and how long should "good soreness" last? If soreness is lasting several days after a session what are the repercussions?
Thanks!
The soreness could go so far as to be devastatingly intense, and could last a week or more, however, I would say this is probably not good soreness since it will prevent you from working out for a while. Any time you are doing a movement through new range of motion, or one with a long eccentric (lowering) phase, or one that goes to muscular failure, then you're likely to be sore afterward. But a barbell on your back, and do walking lunges until you fail, and you'll see what I mean.
If the soreness is very intense, and lasts several days after the workout, then the repercussions are that your life will be slightly inconvenienced, and you probably won't work out again until it subsides. As such, making yourself very sore frequently is probably counterproductive. Also, if you're very sore frequently, you could eventually run into an over training issue, which has negative health consequences and defeats the purpose of working out. However, it would take some work to do this, and you probably don't have to worry about it.
I would say a complete training program will make you sore sometimes, but not constantly.