Muscle soreness after a tough workout typically peaks between one and three days after exercise, then fades on its own within about five to seven days. You can’t eliminate it entirely, but you can shorten its duration, reduce its intensity, and recover faster with the right combination of movement, nutrition, temperature, and timing.
Why Your Muscles Hurt in the First Place
The soreness you feel a day or two after hard exercise is called delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS. It happens because intense or unfamiliar movements, especially those where muscles lengthen under load (think: lowering a heavy weight, running downhill, or the “down” phase of a squat), cause tiny disruptions in muscle fibers. Individual segments of muscle tissue get overstretched beyond their normal range, which damages the surrounding membrane and triggers an immune response.
Within the first few hours, immune cells flood the area to clear out damaged tissue and release inflammatory signals. Over the next 24 hours, a second wave of immune cells arrives to continue cleanup while also kickstarting repair. After about a day, your body shifts gears: anti-inflammatory cells take over, calming the inflammation and stimulating the growth of new muscle tissue. This entire cycle is why soreness builds gradually, peaks around 24 to 72 hours post-exercise, and then resolves. The inflammation isn’t a malfunction. It’s the repair process itself.
Move at a Light to Moderate Pace
The single most effective thing you can do for sore muscles is keep moving. Active recovery, meaning light exercise the day after a hard session, increases blood flow to damaged tissue and helps clear inflammatory byproducts faster. Research published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that moderate-intensity aerobic recovery was more effective than low-intensity or complete rest at reducing soreness after eccentric exercise.
What counts as moderate intensity? Think a brisk walk, easy cycling, swimming at a conversational pace, or light yoga. You should be able to talk comfortably. The goal is circulation, not additional stress. Even 20 to 30 minutes makes a noticeable difference. Sitting still all day when you’re sore feels protective, but it actually prolongs stiffness.
Cold Water Immersion
Cold baths reduce soreness by constricting blood vessels and temporarily dampening the inflammatory response in muscle tissue. According to Mayo Clinic, the water should be 50°F (10°C) or colder. If you’re new to cold exposure, start with 30 seconds to one minute and gradually work up to five to ten minutes per session. Longer isn’t necessarily better, and the optimal protocol is still being refined.
Timing matters. Cold immersion works best within the first hour or two after exercise, when inflammation is ramping up. One caveat: if your primary goal is building muscle size and strength rather than just feeling less sore, frequent cold exposure right after resistance training may slightly blunt the adaptive signals your muscles need to grow. For endurance athletes or anyone prioritizing recovery between sessions, it’s a solid tool.
Tart Cherry Juice and Anti-Inflammatory Foods
Tart cherry juice is one of the most studied natural remedies for exercise-induced soreness, thanks to its high concentration of anthocyanins, the same pigments that give cherries their deep red color. These compounds act as natural anti-inflammatories. A commonly studied protocol involves drinking about 60 to 90 mL of tart cherry juice concentrate mixed with water, or roughly 12 ounces of a tart cherry juice blend, twice daily for several days surrounding a hard training session. Some studies begin supplementation a week before the exercise bout, but even starting the day of provides some benefit.
Capsule forms containing 200 to 500 mg of tart cherry powder are also available if the juice isn’t practical. Beyond cherries, other deeply pigmented fruits (blueberries, pomegranates, blackberries) contain similar compounds. Fatty fish rich in omega-3s and foods high in vitamin C also support the repair process. None of these are magic bullets, but a diet consistently rich in anti-inflammatory foods does reduce the baseline severity of DOMS over time compared to a highly processed diet.
Stay Hydrated
Dehydration appears to make soreness worse, though the evidence is mixed. One study found that people who were dehydrated before performing downhill running reported significantly more pain and tenderness in the days afterward compared to those who were well-hydrated. The likely mechanism is straightforward: dehydrated muscles receive less blood flow, which slows the delivery of immune cells and nutrients needed for repair.
You don’t need to overhydrate or follow a complicated formula. Drinking consistently throughout the day, aiming for pale yellow urine, and replacing fluids lost during exercise is enough to keep this variable from working against you.
Magnesium for Muscle Relaxation
Magnesium plays a direct role in regulating muscle and nerve function, and low levels are associated with increased cramping and prolonged soreness. Many adults don’t get enough through diet alone. The recommended daily intake is 400 to 420 mg for adult men and 310 to 320 mg for adult women. Magnesium glycinate is a well-absorbed form available as tablets, gummies, or powder, and it tends to cause less digestive discomfort than other forms like magnesium oxide.
Good food sources include pumpkin seeds, almonds, spinach, black beans, and dark chocolate. If you train intensely and sweat heavily, your magnesium needs may be higher than average, making supplementation worth considering.
Over-the-Counter Pain Relievers
Ibuprofen and similar anti-inflammatory medications do reduce the pain of DOMS, but there’s been longstanding concern that they might interfere with muscle repair and growth. Recent research from the American Physiological Society puts some of that worry to rest. In a study combining animal and human data, chronic low-dose use of common anti-inflammatories did not reduce muscle size in exercising rats over six weeks, and a single high dose before plyometric exercise in humans did not blunt the molecular signaling pathways responsible for muscle protein synthesis.
This doesn’t mean you should pop ibuprofen after every workout. These drugs still carry risks with regular use, including stomach irritation and kidney strain. But occasional use when soreness is genuinely interfering with your daily life or next training session is unlikely to undermine your gains.
What Helps Before You’re Even Sore
The most powerful soreness reducer is progressive exposure. Your muscles adapt remarkably fast to the specific movements that damage them, a phenomenon called the repeated bout effect. The first time you do heavy lunges after months off, you’ll be hobbling for days. The second time, even at the same intensity, the soreness will be noticeably less. By the third or fourth session, it may barely register.
This means the best prevention strategy is to increase training volume and intensity gradually rather than jumping into a new program at full effort. Adding one or two sets per exercise each week, or increasing weight by small increments, gives your connective tissue and muscle fibers time to adapt without triggering severe DOMS. A proper warm-up that includes dynamic stretching and light sets of the movements you’re about to perform also reduces the severity of micro-damage during the session.
Sleep is the other non-negotiable. The bulk of muscle repair happens during deep sleep, when growth hormone release peaks. Consistently sleeping under six hours measurably slows recovery and amplifies next-day soreness. If you’re doing everything else right but skimping on sleep, you’re working against your own biology.