DOMS, or delayed-onset muscle soreness, peaks 24 to 48 hours after exercise and typically resolves within three to five days on its own. You can’t eliminate it entirely, but several strategies speed up the process and reduce how much it limits your next workout. The key is combining movement, nutrition, and sleep rather than relying on any single fix.
Why Your Muscles Hurt in the First Place
DOMS is caused by microscopic damage to muscle fibers, particularly after eccentric movements, where your muscles lengthen under load. Lowering a heavy weight, running downhill, or doing exercises your body isn’t used to all create this kind of stress. The soreness follows a predictable curve: it develops within 12 to 24 hours, peaks between 24 and 48 hours, then gradually fades. This isn’t the same as the acute burn you feel during a set, which comes from metabolic byproducts and clears within minutes.
The damage itself isn’t a bad thing. It’s part of the stimulus that triggers your muscles to rebuild stronger. But when soreness is severe enough to limit your range of motion or keep you from training, recovery strategies become worth the effort.
Move at Low Intensity
Light movement is one of the most consistently effective ways to temporarily reduce soreness. Walking, easy cycling, swimming, or a gentle yoga flow all increase blood flow to damaged tissues without adding further stress. The relief is often immediate but temporary, fading once you stop, so short bouts spread throughout the day tend to work better than a single session. Keep the effort conversational. If you’re breathing hard, you’ve pushed past the point where active recovery helps.
Foam Roll After Your Workout
Foam rolling reduces muscle tenderness and helps preserve performance in the days following a hard session. Research from the Journal of Athletic Training found that a 20-minute foam rolling session immediately after exercise, repeated every 24 hours, reduced soreness and maintained dynamic movement quality. The protocol used 45 seconds of rolling per muscle group followed by a 15-second rest, then one more round. A high-density roller works best. Focus on the muscle groups you trained, rolling slowly and pausing on tender spots rather than speeding through.
Prioritize Protein Throughout the Day
Your muscles need amino acids to repair, and timing matters almost as much as total intake. Sports nutrition guidelines recommend 1.2 to 2.0 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight daily for active adults. For a 75-kilogram (165-pound) person, that’s roughly 90 to 150 grams per day. Just as important is spreading that intake across meals. Consuming about 0.25 to 0.40 grams per kilogram per meal (roughly 20 to 40 grams depending on your size) stimulates muscle protein synthesis more effectively than loading all your protein into one or two sittings.
Whole food sources offer advantages beyond their protein content. Milk consumed after exercise, for example, has been shown to reduce markers of muscle damage and limit performance declines in subsequent workouts, likely because of its combination of whey, casein, carbohydrates, and micronutrients working together.
Try Tart Cherry Juice
Tart cherry juice is one of the better-supported natural options for exercise recovery. The anthocyanins in Montmorency tart cherries act as anti-inflammatory and antioxidant compounds that help muscle function bounce back faster. The catch is that you need to start drinking it before the workout that causes soreness, not after.
The most common protocol in research is two servings per day (about 8 to 12 ounces each, or 30 milliliters if using a concentrate) for several days before a hard training session and continuing for two to four days afterward. Studies have uniformly shown that this “precovery” approach accelerates the return of muscle function compared to starting only after the damage is done. If you know a particularly demanding workout or event is coming, begin three to four days in advance.
Consider Curcumin Supplements
Curcumin, the active compound in turmeric, reduces the perception of muscle pain and lowers inflammatory markers after exercise. Effective doses in research range widely, from 90 to 5,000 milligrams per day, but a practical starting point is 400 to 1,000 milligrams taken once or twice daily around the time of exercise. At these doses, studies have measured reductions of roughly 23 to 25 percent in key inflammatory markers over the days following a hard workout. Standard turmeric powder from your spice rack contains only about 3 percent curcumin, so a dedicated supplement with enhanced absorption (often labeled as containing piperine or a phytosome complex) is more practical.
Use Cold Water Immersion Strategically
Cold baths genuinely reduce DOMS, but the details matter. The American College of Sports Medicine outlines two effective protocols: either two five-minute immersions at 10°C (50°F) with a two-minute break at room temperature between them, or a single 11- to 15-minute soak at 11 to 15°C (52 to 60°F). Both have been shown to improve recovery, with measurable benefits at 72 hours post-exercise.
Water colder than these ranges or longer immersions don’t appear to provide additional benefit and increase discomfort. If you don’t have a thermometer, water that feels very cold but tolerable, not painfully icy, is roughly in the right range. One important caveat: cold water immersion may blunt the muscle-building adaptations to strength training over time. If your primary goal is gaining muscle, save ice baths for periods when recovery between sessions matters more than long-term growth, like during a tournament or competition week.
Wear Compression Garments
Compression tights, sleeves, or socks worn during or after exercise improve venous blood flow and help your muscles recover strength and power. A 2025 meta-analysis found that compression garments significantly reduced declines in muscle strength across multiple recovery windows: 1 to 24 hours, 25 to 48 hours, and beyond 72 hours post-exercise. For power output, the benefit was strongest in the first 24 hours. Wearing them during your workout and for several hours afterward appears to be the most practical approach. You don’t need medical-grade compression; standard athletic compression gear provides enough pressure.
Sleep Is Non-Negotiable
A single night of poor sleep measurably impairs your body’s ability to repair muscle. Research published in Physiological Reports found that one night of total sleep deprivation reduced muscle protein synthesis by 18 percent, increased the stress hormone cortisol by 21 percent, and dropped testosterone by 24 percent. That combination creates an environment where your body is simultaneously worse at building and more inclined to break down muscle tissue.
Aim for at least seven hours of actual sleep, not just time in bed. On nights following particularly hard training, eight or more hours is better. If you’re doing everything else right but consistently sleeping six hours, you’re likely undercutting your recovery more than any supplement could compensate for.
When Soreness Signals Something Serious
Normal DOMS is uncomfortable but manageable and improves day by day. Rhabdomyolysis is a medical emergency where damaged muscle fibers release their contents into the bloodstream, potentially causing kidney damage. The warning signs that distinguish it from ordinary soreness include pain that is far more severe than you’d expect from the workout, dark tea- or cola-colored urine, and sudden weakness or an inability to complete physical tasks you’d normally handle easily. If you notice any of these, particularly dark urine after an unusually intense or unfamiliar workout, get to an emergency room. The only accurate diagnostic test is a blood draw measuring a muscle protein called creatine kinase, so this isn’t something you can evaluate at home.