The most effective ways to relieve workout soreness include light movement, cold therapy, foam rolling, adequate protein intake, and simply giving your muscles time. Most post-workout soreness peaks between 24 and 72 hours after exercise, then resolves on its own within a few days. But you don’t have to just sit and wait it out.
Why Your Muscles Feel Sore
When you do unfamiliar or intense exercise, especially movements where your muscles lengthen under load (think: lowering a heavy weight, running downhill, or the “down” part of a squat), you create microscopic disruption in your muscle fibers. Scientists used to call these “micro-tears,” but more recent thinking suggests this disruption is less about damage and more about remodeling. Your muscles are adapting to handle that stress better next time.
What actually causes the pain is the inflammatory response in the connective tissue surrounding your muscle fibers. Your body sends immune cells (neutrophils, macrophages, and others) to the area to begin repair work. These cells release substances that stimulate pain receptors, which is why soreness builds gradually over hours rather than hitting you immediately. This delayed pattern is why it’s called delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS. You’ll typically feel it start 12 to 24 hours after your workout, with the worst pain arriving around 48 to 72 hours later.
Move at Low Intensity
It sounds counterintuitive, but light activity is one of the best things you can do when you’re sore. Active recovery works by increasing blood flow to your muscles, delivering oxygen-rich blood to healing tissues while clearing out cellular waste products from the workout. The National Academy of Sports Medicine recommends keeping your heart rate between 30 and 60 percent of your maximum during active recovery. For most people, that means a casual walk, easy cycling, a light swim, or gentle yoga. You should be able to hold a full conversation without effort. The goal isn’t to train. It’s to move enough to get blood flowing without creating any additional stress on your muscles.
Use Cold Therapy After Hard Sessions
Applying cold to sore muscles constricts blood vessels, which reduces swelling and numbs pain. This works best immediately after an intense workout or when you’re returning to exercise after a break. You can use ice packs, cold water immersion, or even a bag of frozen vegetables wrapped in a thin towel. Icing periodically throughout the day, even while sitting at your desk, helps keep inflammation down. Sessions of 15 to 20 minutes at a time are a reasonable target.
Heat therapy works differently. It opens blood vessels and increases blood flow, loosening stiff tissue. Heat is better suited as a pre-workout tool to warm up muscles or for chronic stiffness, not for the acute inflammation you feel in the first couple of days after a tough session. Once the worst soreness has passed, heat can help restore range of motion.
Foam Roll for One to Two Minutes Per Area
Foam rolling applies pressure to tight, sore muscle tissue and can reduce the sensation of soreness while improving your range of motion. The key is keeping each muscle group to about one minute of rolling, and never exceeding two minutes on a single area. Overdoing it can irritate already-inflamed tissue. Roll slowly, pausing on tender spots for a few seconds before moving on. Focus on the major muscle groups that feel tight: quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves, and upper back. You can foam roll both before and after workouts, but for soreness relief specifically, post-workout or on rest days tends to be most helpful.
Eat Enough Protein
Your muscles need protein to repair the fiber disruption caused by exercise. Research from Mass General Brigham suggests consuming 15 to 25 grams of protein within two hours after your workout to stimulate muscle growth and repair. Roughly 20 grams in that post-workout window is the sweet spot. Consuming more than 40 grams in a single sitting doesn’t appear to provide additional recovery benefits.
Throughout the day, aim for 1.2 to 1.7 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. For a 150-pound person, that’s roughly 82 to 116 grams spread across the day. You don’t need supplements to hit these numbers. Chicken breast, Greek yogurt, eggs, tofu, lentils, and fish all deliver enough protein per serving to keep your muscles well-supplied for repair.
Tart Cherry Juice and Anti-Inflammatory Foods
Tart cherry juice has legitimate research behind it for reducing muscle soreness. The benefit comes from anthocyanins, plant compounds with anti-inflammatory properties. In clinical studies, participants drank two servings per day (each containing at least 40 milligrams of anthocyanins), starting three days before intense exercise and continuing for four days after. Most studies include this “loading phase” before the workout, so drinking cherry juice only after you’re already sore is less likely to help. If you know a hard training day is coming, starting a few days early is the more evidence-backed approach.
Beyond cherry juice, foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids (salmon, walnuts, flaxseed) and colorful fruits and vegetables provide natural anti-inflammatory compounds that support recovery over time.
Think Twice About Ibuprofen
Reaching for ibuprofen or similar anti-inflammatory painkillers is tempting when you’re sore, but there’s a real tradeoff. Research published in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that taking maximum over-the-counter doses of ibuprofen during an eight-week resistance training program reduced muscle growth in young adults compared to a control group. The exact mechanism is still unclear, but the pattern is consistent: the same inflammation that causes your soreness is also part of the signaling process that triggers your muscles to grow back stronger. Blunting that inflammation may blunt your gains.
If the soreness is mild to moderate, you’re better off using the other strategies on this list. If it’s severe enough that painkillers feel necessary, occasional use won’t derail your progress, but relying on them after every workout is worth reconsidering.
Compression Garments Need Extended Wear
Compression sleeves and tights can help with recovery, but only if you wear them long enough. One study found that wearing a compression sleeve for just 12 hours did not improve recovery from exercise-induced muscle damage in the upper arm. Studies that showed real benefits had participants wearing compression for 72 to 120 hours (three to five days). If you’re going to invest in compression gear for recovery, plan on wearing it consistently for several days after a hard workout, not just for a few hours.
Magnesium May Help, but Results Are Mixed
Magnesium plays a role in muscle contraction and relaxation, and some athletes supplement it for recovery. One study found that taking 500 milligrams of magnesium daily led to less muscle soreness at 24, 48, and 72 hours after a time trial. However, another study using 500 milligrams of magnesium oxide daily found no measurable effect on any recovery outcome after three weeks. The form of magnesium likely matters, as some types are absorbed much better than others. If you suspect you’re not getting enough magnesium from your diet (leafy greens, nuts, seeds, and whole grains are all good sources), a supplement taken about two hours before exercise may offer some benefit.
Stretching: What Actually Helps
Static stretching before a workout doesn’t prevent soreness and can actually reduce your strength and power during the session. Save static stretches for after your workout, when they can help return muscles to their pre-exercise length and reduce post-workout stiffness. Before exercise, dynamic stretching (leg swings, arm circles, walking lunges, high knees) is the better choice. It warms up your muscles through movement without the performance drawbacks of holding long static stretches.
What to Expect on a Recovery Timeline
DOMS builds over several hours after your workout. You’ll notice stiffness or tenderness starting around 12 to 24 hours later, with peak soreness arriving one to three days after the session. For most people, the worst of it resolves within four to five days. If you’re new to exercise or dramatically increased your intensity, soreness can linger a bit longer. The good news is that once your muscles have adapted to a particular type of exercise, repeating it causes significantly less soreness. This is sometimes called the “repeated bout effect.” Your first week of squats might leave you hobbling, but by week three or four, the same workout will barely register.
If soreness persists beyond a week, is concentrated in a single spot rather than spread across the muscle, or comes with visible swelling or bruising, that’s more likely an injury than normal DOMS.