How to Prevent and Treat a Sore Core
Follow these postworkout tips to avoid delayed onset muscle soreness.
Building a strong core for your bike rides means dedicating some time during your gym sessions to practice planks, sit-ups, dead bugs and other ab exercises. The results will translate into better balance, cycling efficiency, and posture for the road, but also a sore core which is never fun—especially when it hurts to laugh.
Like the rest of your muscles, your abdominals and obliques, along with the rest of your core movers and stabilizers are susceptible to delayed onset muscles soreness (a.k.a. DOMS), the painful inflammation caused by micro-tears in worked muscles.
“Generally you stay sore for about two days, and [the feeling] diminishes as the inflammation goes down and your body gets rid of the fluid,” explains David Costill, Ph.D., program director emeritus of the Human Performance Laboratory at Ball State University. Still, when your core feels sore it can seem debilitating.
Here are a few strategies to help remedy your sore abs, so you won’t hesitate to laugh or complete your next workout.
Apply a Warm Compress
In a perfect world, you could soak in a steamy bath until your soreness subsided. However, a hot water bottle or heat wrap can do the trick just as well. The goal is to heat up your muscles to increase blood flow in and out of the damaged area, which also speeds up the delivery of healing nutrients and the removal of metabolic waste.
Apply a warm compress or bottle for 15 to 20 minutes at a time to relax stiff muscles and improve healing circulation.
Flush and Feed
There’s no magical food cure for an achy core, but you can help mitigate the swelling with natural anti-inflammatory foods, such as tart cherry juice, watermelon juice, and omega-3 fatty acid-rich foods like nuts and fish. And drink plenty of fluids to stay hydrated; dehydration can make muscle soreness worse.
Move a Little
Even though it may feel counterintuitive, a little motion is actually exactly what your cranky muscles need. Research shows that active recovery—gently moving your muscles—helps relieve postexercise soreness, likely by stimulating circulation.
Soothe overworked abs by flipping over so you’re facedown, with your hands flat on the floor on either side of your chest. Slowly straighten your arms, lifting your head, shoulders, and torso off the ground as far as comfortably possible like an upward dog pose in yoga.
Try Some Compression
As cyclists, we talk a lot about compression socks, but your calves aren’t the only hard-working muscles that appreciate a good squeeze now and then.
Compression base layers like 2XU compression tops (available on Amazon) can support your sore muscles and improve circulation, so you feel better while your muscles recover.
Make it a Habit
“When you do an activity you’re unaccustomed to, the contractions necessary are novel to your muscles,” says Costill. Those fibers won’t be as efficient as if you were doing an activity you practice regularly; some will be firing incorrectly and some will be tensing up.
In other words, any new movement will beat those muscles up a little extra. (Hence the sore core.) So rather than sporadically hitting your abs with a surprise movement every few months, set yourself up for success (and less pain) by making core work a regular part of your routine.
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