Workout Tip: You Should NEVER be Sore

Matthew Sloan trains very high-frequency and is rarely sore!

Your workouts should not make you very sore. It sounds odd, I know, especially when someone first hears it. But it's true.

I'm rarely, if ever, truly "sore" after any of my workouts nowadays. I sometimes have a small soreness the next day, but it's more a feeling of tightness, a "good soreness", if there is such a thing, that is usually from a new exercise the day before, or doing an old exercise in a new way.

I shouldn't be sore, but you shouldn't be sore, either. If you are, you are doing it wrong. Don't worry if you're now angry with me, since it could be that you have been doing workouts wrong your whole life, especially if you're now trying to remember a time when you were not sore from a workout.

Let's say that your max squat for 10 repetitions is 225 lbs. And let's say you do those 10-all out reps in a workout on Monday. Even with one set, you are going to be sore until Thursday - assuming it was a true "max" set. But if you do 5 reps with 225 on Monday, you can come right back in the next day and do 5 more reps on Tuesday, and then, guess what? You can come in Wednesday and do another 5 reps, and same thing for Thursday - another super easy set of 5. You could keep doing this until 5 reps gets just too easy, then you could do 6 reps using the same philosophy, then 7 reps eventually, and so on. At some point, you would be doing 10 reps every day, and you would never be sore. Oh, and you would have probably built quite a lot of leg muscle - not to mention overall size or bulk - by this point, as well.

I'm not saying the above method is what you should use, or that it's even the most efficient way to workout, but it's an example to show that you've probably been doing it wrong. Most people are in the same boat. And, unfortunately, most will continue to be in this very same boat of thinking "good" workouts mean workouts that make you "sweat" or make you "exhausted" by the end of it.

But the majority are always wrong on every subject you could think of - and that's just the way that it is. And if you think that's hyperbole, or that it simply can't be true, then pick any subject that you know a lot about, and see if the majority understands that subject? The majority of people will always know "general" information. They will know that working out is good for you, helps to build muscle, staves off the effects of aging, and helps to keep you trim. But knowing how to go about achieving those goals? That's something else entirely.

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