TLDR: Soreness should not be your main indicator of whether or not you had a good workout

This is a super common worry that I hear from new clients all the time! They come to me with some variation of this statement: “Carly I didn’t feel sore after my sessions this week; why not / should I be pushing harder / am I making progress?!

Soreness is a super misunderstood concept in the fitness industry and it’s a very common misconception that soreness is a good indicator of a successful training session. The reality?

Soreness should not be your main indicator of whether or not you had a good workout

In fact, excessive soreness might be an indication that your body is not effectively adapting and recovering from your training sessions. When you’re following a progressively overloaded strength training program, the goal is that over time your body adapts to the new training stimulus and is able to come back stronger in response to the imposed stressors (aka your training). So once you’ve been following a new training block for a couple weeks, you actually shouldn’t feel insanely sore because this means your body is adapting well.

But of course soreness happens and this typically occurs when your body is doing something that it’s not used to doing (i.e. it hasn’t had a chance to adapt yet). Soreness is normal when:

Starting a new training program
Incorporating a new movement
Increasing weight
Changing rep ranges
Including tempos (negatives) in your training

You will most commonly feel sore when starting a new training block but this will dissipate 1-3 weeks after starting the program as your body begins to adapt and recover better.

Train With Moxie