Sore Isn't Hurt: Telling the Difference (and What Else Actually Moves the Needle)
Warm-up, pain versus soreness, and progress tracking
Why Warm-Ups Matter
A warm-up is not optional and it is not stretching. It has two distinct physiological purposes: raising body temperature to improve muscle contractility and joint lubrication, and progressively loading the nervous system for the specific movements to follow. A properly structured warm-up reduces injury risk, improves performance in the working sets, and provides an early indicator of how the session should be approached — if your body is not moving well in the warm-up, that is information.
General Warm-Up (3–5 minutes)
The first part of the warm-up raises core body temperature and increases blood flow to working muscles. Light cardiovascular activity — 3–5 minutes of rowing, cycling, incline walking, or jumping jacks — is sufficient. You should feel mildly warm and have a slightly elevated heart rate. This is not a Zone 2 session; it is activation.
Dynamic Mobility (5 minutes)
After general warming, move the joints that will be used in the session through their full range of motion under active muscular control. This is where dynamic stretching — as opposed to static stretching, which is not appropriate here — belongs.
For lower body and leg sessions: leg swings (forward and lateral), hip circles, bodyweight squats with a pause at the bottom, walking lunges, and ankle rotations. For upper body and pull sessions: arm circles, band pull-aparts, shoulder rotations, scapular retractions, thoracic rotations, cat-cow, and shoulder dislocations with a band. For cardio sessions, simply begin at a lower intensity for the first 5 minutes before settling into your working pace.
Ramp-Up Sets for Lifting
For every compound movement in a resistance session, perform 2–3 ramp-up sets at progressively increasing weight before the first working set. These sets are not working sets — they do not count toward your volume — but they are essential for neural preparation and for identifying whether the working weight is appropriate that day.
Example for a working set of 80kg bench press at 3×8:
Set 1: 20kg (empty bar) × 10 reps — movement pattern and motor groove
Set 2: 50kg × 6 reps — loading the muscle, increasing specificity
Set 3: 70kg × 3 reps — close to working weight, minimal fatigue
Working sets: 80kg × 8 reps × 3 sets
For isolation movements — curls, lateral raises, cable work — a single lighter warm-up set is usually sufficient. These movements involve less systemic load and the nervous system reaches readiness more quickly.
Warm-up for cardio
Zone 2 sessions do not require a separate warm-up beyond the first 5 minutes at a lower intensity before settling into your target Zone 2 pace. VO2 max sessions require a proper 10–15 minute warm-up at easy intensity — the work intervals are near-maximal and cold muscles and joints should not be subjected to that demand.
Pain vs Soreness
This distinction matters and is not subtle once you understand it. Confusing the two leads people to either train through injuries they should be managing, or to stop training because of normal soreness they interpret as damage.
DOMS — Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness
DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) is the dull, diffuse aching in a muscle that typically peaks 24–48 hours after exercise and resolves within 72 hours. It is caused primarily by eccentric loading and is most pronounced after novel exercises or returning to training after a break. DOMS is:
Located in the muscle belly, not the joint
Diffuse — covering a general area rather than a specific point
Worst on the day after training, not during the session itself
Reduced by light movement and gentle activity — it does not worsen with low-intensity use
DOMS does not indicate damage to be avoided. It indicates adaptation underway. Training can continue through DOMS, though extreme soreness may warrant modifying intensity in the affected area temporarily.
Joint Pain
Pain in or directly around a joint — knee, shoulder, elbow, hip — is a different category and should not be ignored. Joint pain during an exercise is a clear signal to stop that exercise and investigate. Common causes include:
Range of motion exceeding current mobility (e.g. squatting below a depth your ankles cannot support with a neutral spine)
Accumulated wear from repeated sessions without adequate recovery
Technique errors that load the joint rather than the intended musculature
Modify the exercise before stopping entirely — a shorter range of motion, a different foot position, or a machine variation often resolves the pain while allowing continued training.
Sharp or Acute Pain — Stop Immediately
Sharp, sudden, or intense pain during a set — particularly in connective tissue (tendons, ligaments) — is not a signal to push through. Stop the set. Do not complete the rep. Trying to finish a set through sharp pain converts a mild strain into a serious injury in the overwhelming majority of cases. Rest the area for 48–72 hours and seek medical assessment if:
The pain is severe or does not reduce within a few days
There is visible swelling, bruising, or instability at the joint
The pain recurs with the same movement on return to training
You heard or felt a pop, snap, or tear during the movement
When to modify vs when to stop vs when to see a doctor
Modify: dull muscle soreness, minor discomfort that does not worsen during the movement, joint stiffness at the start of a session that eases as you warm up.
Stop the exercise: pain that appears or increases during the movement, any joint pain during a set, sharp or sudden pain at any point.
See a physiotherapist: pain that does not resolve within 72 hours, swelling or instability, recurring pain at the same site across multiple sessions, any suspected tendon or ligament injury.
Progress Tracking
Progressive overload is only possible if you know what you did last week. Without a training log, you are guessing — and guessing tends to produce stagnation rather than progress. The log does not need to be sophisticated. A note on your phone containing the exercise, weight, sets, and reps completed is sufficient.
What to Log
Exercise name
Weight used (in kg or lb — be consistent)
Sets completed
Reps completed per set
Optional but useful: how the session felt (energy level, RPE — Rate of Perceived Exertion — 1–10, where 10 is maximal effort)
When to Increase Weight
The rule is simple: when you complete all prescribed reps across all sets with 2+ reps still in reserve, add weight at the next session.
When not to increase weight:
You did not complete all prescribed reps (e.g. managed 8, 7, 6 instead of 8, 8, 8).
Technique broke down in any set — form failure is not completion.
You are in a deload week — the purpose of deloads is reduction, not progression.
You are returning from illness, travel, or a break — restore previous weights gradually over 1–2 sessions before attempting new personal bests.
Handling Plateaus
A plateau is not a sign that your body cannot improve — it is information about the training stimulus. If a weight has not moved for 3 or more sessions, consider:
Volume: Are you training the muscle group enough times per week? Twice-weekly frequency is the minimum to progress.
Proximity to failure: Are your sets genuinely hard, or have you become accustomed to stopping well before true effort?
Sleep and nutrition: Adaptation does not occur in the gym — it occurs during recovery. Poor sleep or insufficient protein will stall progress regardless of training quality.
Deload and reset: Sometimes a planned deload week followed by a fresh mesocycle at slightly reduced volume resolves what felt like a permanent plateau.
Performance Markers Worth Tracking
Resting heart rate — a declining resting heart rate over months indicates improving cardiovascular fitness
Zone 2 pace at the same heart rate — if you are cycling at 180W to maintain 140bpm in month 1 and 210W to maintain 140bpm in month 4, your Zone 2 fitness has improved substantially
Bodyweight trend over weeks (not days — daily fluctuation is noise)
Session recovery — are you feeling ready to train at the next session, or chronically fatigued?
Returning to Training After Injury
The following is general guidance for minor musculoskeletal injuries — strains, mild sprains, and localised soft tissue issues — and is not a substitute for professional assessment.
Graded exposure, not complete rest. For the vast majority of soft tissue injuries — muscle strains, tendon irritation, mild joint inflammation — complete rest is rarely the optimal treatment beyond the first 24–72 hours. The injured tissue needs progressive loading to remodel and regain strength. Graded exposure means returning to training with a significantly reduced load, reduced range of motion, or a modified exercise variation, and systematically increasing the demand over days and weeks as pain allows.
See a physiotherapist, not just a GP. For musculoskeletal injuries — anything involving muscles, tendons, ligaments, or joints — a physiotherapist is the appropriate first clinical contact in most cases. GPs can rule out fractures and red-flag pathology, but a physiotherapist assesses movement, diagnoses soft tissue injury specifically, and prescribes a rehabilitation programme.
Train around, not through. A significant advantage of a structured resistance training programme over sport or running is that injury to one body part does not require complete training cessation. A shoulder injury does not prevent lower body training. A knee problem does not prevent upper body work.
Injury rehabilitation — the practical framework
Days 1–3: Relative rest, ice if acutely inflamed, no training of the injured area.
Days 3–14: Introduce pain-free movement of the injured area at very low load. Movements should not provoke pain during or after. If they do, reduce load or range further.
Weeks 2–6: Progressive reloading — add load, range, and complexity as pain allows. If pain spikes at any stage, step back one level and progress more gradually.
When to return to full training: when the injured area can perform the relevant movements through full range, at full load, without pain during or 24 hours after.
Note: this framework is for minor soft tissue injuries. Suspected fractures, complete ligament tears, or injuries that do not improve within 2–3 weeks warrant physiotherapy assessment.