Good MORNING, New Leaves!!!! How is everyone feeling? I hope that you are all doing well. I am VERY anxious to hear about everyone’s progress: We are almost at the half way point in our 30 Day Fitness Challenge!

I wanted to address something I neglected to mention earlier: Post workout soreness. You already know what it is: the day after, or in some cases two days after, a workout, your muscles will feel achy, tight and/or sore. When you challenge your muscles with strength building exercises, you cause microscopic tears in the muscle fibers. There is no need for alarm! These tears are necessary and the goal of a strength building workout. Your heart pumps nutrient rich blood to the muscles to repair the microscopic tears, which heal quite rapidly (within 48 hours). This is the reason you need to wait an entire day in between workouts, to give your muscles time to heal: 48 hours will have elapsed when you workout at, say 9:00 am on Monday and then again at 9:00 am on Wednesday.

As the muscle heals, it also gets firmer and over time, denser. The result is a hard, strong body! Lactic acid also builds up in the muscles as you workout. This is another reason for post workout soreness.  The lactic acid buildup passes through the length of the muscles as you stretch, reducing post workout soreness greatly, which is one of the reasons why you should always stretch after a workout.

Having said that, I must point out that you will not be sore all the time. A lack of post workout soreness does not mean that you have wasted your time: It simply means that your muscles are healing at a faster pace.  If, however, you don’t at least feel a little tired at the end of a workout, it means you need to increase the amount of resistance you are using. You can do this by adding dumbbells or increasing the poundage of dumbbells you are already using.

If you are doing an exercise that will not allow you to use dumbbells, you will need to perform more repetitions or perhaps use ankle weights. I will address ways to make your workouts more challenging over the remainder of the 30 Day Challenge.

I must bid you all farewell: Please, share your progress with us and have a GREAT DAY!!