Survival of the Fittest
Story & Photos by Jeff & Martha Ellis

The agony of adaptation is ever-apparent when starting a new workout program. In the new year, many of you will hit the gym for the first time in a long time. With that will come the inevitable pain and suffering of delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS.

Whether you’re starting a new program or intensifying an old one, some very interesting things occur physiologically, but oftentimes, understanding them will make the adaptation process a little less painful (emotionally, that is).

Stress Is Good?
Whether you’re working on increasing your aerobic capacity or striving for stronger muscles, you’re asking your body to make some kind of adaptation with every workout you complete. But there are some tips you can follow to help you achieve results while avoiding injury or the fallout of over-training.

To initiate the adaptive process, there must be stress. Your muscles must do something they aren’t used to doing. This can mean several things. For the weightlifter, this means lifting more than 60 percent of your one-rep maximum (1 RM). For the aerobic athlete, this means doing interval work or gradually increasing distance or speed. Remember: If you’re not pushing yourself and creating that muscle stress, you’re wasting your time. (Therefore, 12-oz. curls are not muscle enhancers.)



Leave the Zone
How do you know you’re pushing yourself enough? If you lift weight regularly, but you don’t know your one- rep maximum for any given lift, it’s safe to say that if it takes effort to complete 4–8 repetitions at a given weight, you’re well within an effective weight range. Aerobic athletes should push beyond their aerobic threshold. You’ll really know you’re there when you can’t say five or more words without gasping for air.

For the unfit individual, it will be considerably easier to initiate a response because it will take very little to stress muscles that aren’t used to doing much. It’s all about moving out of your comfort zone physically. If you’re used to sitting, walking will do it. If you’re used to running 5 miles on the flats, running 5 on the hills will do it.

As you ask your body to make these exertions, you begin to make four major changes:
1. You improve your heart strength, which leads to a higher cardiac output. Pumping more blood means you develop more oxygen-carrying capacity;
2. Your lungs become more effective at transferring oxygen into the blood;
3. At a cellular level, you become more efficient at utilizing that oxygen; and
4. Your muscles get stronger.

None of this occurs for people living a sedentary lifestyle.

The DOMS Effect
When you work hard enough to initiate an adaptation in strength, you actually create micro-tears in the cell walls of your muscles. Muscle strengthening comes with the healing of those tears. This is true in both weight training and aerobic conditioning.

You know you’ve “worked” when you experience sore muscles 24–36 hours after working out. This is referred to as DOMS. One misconception with DOMS is that the pain is caused by lactic acid still sitting in the muscles. Some believe that by working the sore muscle groups, they will actually facilitate healing by “flushing” the lactic acid out. Not true.

There are several metabolizing and buffering mechanisms at work constantly within your body, which fights for homeostasis, or equilibrium, at every moment. So when you begin to produce lactic acid in your muscles, two things happen: 1) the muscles will eventually fail if the workload isn’t diminished or removed, and 2) your body simultaneously works to neutralize the acid to minimize its harmful effects. DOMS is the result of the muscle damage caused by the exertion, not residual lactic acid.

Suffice it to say that DOMS is a necessary evil to strengthening muscles. If you’re not feeling some muscle soreness a day or two after working out, step it up a notch. Inversely, too much muscle soreness means you’re may be overdoing it. DOMS should subside in a day or two. Any longer and you may want to back it down a bit.

A Final Note
When you have DOMS, remember that this is your body’s way of telling you it’s time to rest those particular muscles. Just as creating too much soreness in the first place can be detrimental, training sore muscles can also be problematic. Again, as your muscles heal during this painful phase, they become stronger. But if you continually compound the damage and fail to allow healing to occur, you’ll realize diminished strength and will likely injure yourself.

Division Chief Martha Ellis has been a firefighter with the Salt Lake City Fire Department (SLCFD) for more than 14 years, serving as a firefighter, an engineer, a media technician, an ARFF training officer, an airport fire marshal and currently the fire marshal for Salt Lake City. She has won the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge Women’s Division five times, and held the world record for 8 consecutive years. She also works as a certified fitness coordinator for the SLCFD.

Captain Jeff Ellis of the Murray (Utah) Fire Department (MFD) has served for more than 23 years as a firefighter, an engineer, a hazmat technician and a shift training captain. He’s been a certified fitness coordinator for the department since 1996. As a competitor in the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge, he has won two overall world championships, three Over 40 world championships and helped MFD take the team trophy. He has been active in teaching all aspects of firefighting, including swiftwater rescue and fitness and nutrition in the fire service.

E-mail your fitness-related questions or comments to Jeff and Martha at fit2serve@gmail.com.

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