I am sore today. My inner thighs are feeling the effects of yesterday’s workout.
Why am I sore?
Let’s put aside the fact that no one really knows for sure why muscles get sore from being worked out, and just know that they are sore from being worked out.
“But,” you may ask, “why are your legs sore? Don’t you work your legs out? Insanity is a lot of leg work, isn’t it?”
True enough, but this is why mixing up my routines is so important. Mixing it up confuses my muscles, working them in ways they are not accustomed to, and making them stronger in the process.
I touched on this subject in the post “Cardio: How much do we need?“.
The gist of the concept is that when you want to be really good at one particular activity, you do that activity over and over. If you want to be a good runner, you run. If you want to be a good cycler, you cycle. That trains your muscles to optimize themselves for that particular activity.
But don’t think that a world-class cyclist — a guy you would certainly say is in shape — can jump off his bike and run a marathon. Sure, he’ll be further along the training path than someone who sits on the couch every night, but he will need to train to be able to run that marathon, because his body is maximized for cycling.
And that is the basis of muscle confusion. If you want to be generally fit — and that is my goal — you need to do a variety of exercises to keep your muscles guessing, keep them from establishing a routine.
Tony Horton’s P90X, among many other strength-training programs, are built on that approach.
Anyway, back to my personal muscle soreness.
Yesterday I did for the first time since mid-February Tony Horton’s “Base & Back” from his One-On-One series. (FYI, that particular workout is in Volume 3.) The last time I did that routine was about six months ago, so, even having done a round of Insanity and many other leg workouts in between, I am sore today, because, apparently, “Base & Back” made me use some muscles I haven’t used quite so much recently.
In an effort to keep my muscles confused, I try to only do a particular series of routines for 3 or 4 weeks. I will then take a recovery week and start a new series. That’s how Tony Horton’s P90X works, so I kept that strategy in place after I completed that program.
For what it’s worth, I think the confusion could probably be achieved by just reversing the order of the exercises in each routine, if you want to keep it really simple. But I get a kick out of creating new routines and weekly programs.
So, yeah, my muscles are a bit sore, and I like it. That soreness tells me that my general fitness strategy is working.