Live Life Team
Muscle pain can ruin your day or evening. Perhaps you were planning on playing a friendly game of squash with your friend? How about five-a-side after work? Well, muscle pain can easily curtail these plans and leave you unable to engage in physical activities that enrich your life in a health and social aspect. If muscle pain is affecting your social life, then here are some tips on managing the pain and ensuring that you can keep up your extracurricular activities.
Warming up and down
As you get older, your muscles become less cooperative when it comes to taking part in physical exertion. This is why it is important to thoroughly warm your muscles up and down when engaging in a sport or physical activity. A warm-up will allow your muscles to better deal with what you are about to put them through. It will also help reduce the risk of injury and the build-up of lactic acid in your muscles. Warming down when you finish exercising will disperse more of this lactic acid and help prevent you from experiencing too much muscle pain the following day.
If you regularly suffer from muscle pain, then warming up and down properly when taking part in sporting events should help limit or alleviate discomfort the next day. When you suffer from muscle pain in your everyday life, warming your muscles by engaging in stretches in the morning should help prepare your body for the day ahead and even reduce your pain levels over time.
Heat
Heat can be an effective tool for relieving muscle pain, and there are several ways of applying heat to your sore muscles. Placing a hot water bottle on the affected area or taking a hot bath for more extensive pain are two easy ways to apply heat to your muscles. While cold water can sometimes be helpful, it is more useful if an injury has just occurred as opposed to relieving general soreness.
Heat works by opening up your blood vessels and allowing more blood to get to the area that is in pain. This helps your muscles relax and reduces the intensity of the pain that you feel. You should never use extreme levels of heat, which means that having a bath in boiling water is not a good idea. Also, placing a towel between your hot water bottle and your skin will help prevent any burns.
Massage
A massage is such a simple method of helping to remove muscle pain. A sports massage will work out any knots in your muscles and give you more suppleness and flexibility. It will also help reduce any swelling and inflammation in your muscles. Massages are also great for preventing muscle tightness, which adds to the sensation of pain.
The heat that a massage delivers to your muscles will help open up your blood vessels just as applying heat via a warm object would. Indulge in a massage to relax your muscles and decrease any pain.
