We have been primed to expect that our bodies may feel sore after exercise, and while feeling some muscle soreness is not at all an indicator of the effectiveness of your workout, we usually don’t question it. But what about those days when we wake up and feel sore or a bit achy and we can’t attribute it to exercise? When you say to yourself, “but I did nothing at all yesterday!”
It can be confusing and/or distressing to feel like your body has betrayed you by deciding to feel sore for seemingly no reason. It’s all too easy to write these days off as the unfortunate consequence of aging, or an old injury that you just can’t shake, or even an oncoming illness. And while those things could contribute to an unexplained stiff, sore, or achy body, it’s also quite likely that if you think a little more, your past day or days of “doing nothing” might actually offer a very clear explanation for how you’re feeling.
Is your idea of “doing nothing” actually doing nothing?
The way we frame our activity in our minds is incredibly important. What do you count as exercise? Activity that is formally labeled as exercise only? Or do you include activities such as gardening and yard work, walking around a new city on vacation, and cleaning the house?
If you consider “exercise” to consist only of time when you dress for it and break a sweat, then you are probably excluding a whole host of activities that can absolutely result in sore muscles. On those days that you skip your regular workout to spend four hours cleaning out the garage, you should realize that you probably got more movement cleaning the garage than you would have in 30 or 40 minutes of taking your regular bike ride or walk. Yard work requires a huge amount of varied movement that might not appear in your regular workouts, and it’s normal for dedicated gardeners to spend hours in the yard. Ambling around on vacation might not seem like exercise at the moment, but walking all day is absolutely a cumulative activity that you should expect to feel.
Your “do nothing” day might actually have been a day or two spent full of activity! Don’t discount these days and these activities as times of non-exercise. It might not be the activity that you think of as exercise, but it still counts.
“Doing nothing” is actually hard on the body!
Sometimes we really did “do nothing” the day prior to waking up feeling sore, and these would be those days marked by being sedentary almost all day. Think about days spent on the couch feeling sick, or long travel days spent in a car or airplane seat. Days when your body exists in the same position for hours on end. Believe it or not, this is harder on the body than normal movement!
Bodies are wonderfully adaptable, and will, over time, condition to more effectively do what you ask them to do. If you are an inherently active person, your body is conditioned to be up and about, moving in multiple ways, keeping your joints and your muscles balanced and lubricated for action. (The reverse is also true. If you ask your body to get better at sitting and not moving all day, it will!)
On days when you find yourself sitting or lounging excessively (not moving your spine or limbs), staring at a book or a screen for hours (not moving your head and neck), you are actually asking your body to maintain a tiny sliver of its movement potential for a very long duration. If you think of the potential of all or your joints to move in a circle (this is a vast oversimplification, but a good visual to understand the concept), not moving your body is asking your joints to hang out in one teeny, tiny slice of your movement circle pie. But it takes muscles to stay in that pie slice of movement! And by not moving through the rest of your movement pie, you are placing an overwhelming burden on only a few muscles, while completely neglecting the rest. You are actually really, really working those few muscle fibers hard, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that you feel it the next day.
Bottom Line: Using your body differently than it is accustomed will understandably result in sore, stiff, or achy muscles.
Your body gets used to doing what you ask it to do. Getting out of your movement routine will use your body differently than it is accustomed and will result in a greater ask of different muscles in different ways, and this may result in muscle soreness, stiffness, or aches the next day. This can happen via seemingly innocuous but cumulative movement, or due to hardly any movement at all.
The best way to keep your body as protected as possible from unpleasant aches, soreness and stiffness, is to regularly engage in a variety of activities or an activity that asks your body to move in a variety of ways (such as pilates and the GYROTONIC® Method). You want to use as much of your movement pie - for every joint - on a regular basis.
And if you do find yourself constrained to the couch or a travel seat, try to move your joints through their full range of motion at least once or twice during the day. Then expect that you might need a day or two of gentle movement to feel like your body has unwinded, opened, relaxed, and recovered from the strains of being sedentary.