Can't Straighten Your Arms After A Workout? (original) (raw)
If you can't extend your arms after working out, you likely have delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). The soreness, tightness, and swelling in your arms result from inflammation and can prevent you from stretching the elbow joint comfortably.
DOMS will peak about 48 hours after a workout and progressively improve in the following days. If it doesn't improve or the pain is severe, you may have strained a tendon in your bicep.
As a professional trainer, there’s no better feeling than a great gym session for myself or a client. But sometimes, a great workout comes with consequences, like not being able to straighten your arms.
It is important to mention that while getting a little stiff shouldn’t immediately sound any alarm bells, there are circumstances where it may not be so harmless.
Read on to learn more about:
- Why you can't straighten your arms after a workout
- How to treat sore arms
- How to prevent getting sore arms in the future
- What to do if the pain is severe
Why You Can't Straight Your Arms After Working Out
Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) can significantly affect one's ability to straighten their arms after an intense workout, especially if the exercise focuses on the biceps or triceps. This soreness arises from microscopic tears in the muscle fiber during strenuous resistance training or unfamiliar physical activities.
According to a study, eccentric exercises can increase muscle soreness and decrease range of motion, making it hard to extend your arm at the elbow post-exercise.
Slowly lowering the dumbbell in a bicep curl is one tip to increase your gains but can also cause painful soreness. Below, I'll share more ways to tweak your training to prevent soreness.
Wondering which speed is best for doing bicep curls? Check out Is It Better To Do Bicep Curls Fast or Slow?
Here are other reasons that can increase DOMS after a workout:
- New to Resistance Training: If you're new to lifting or returning after a long break, your muscles are more likely to overreact to exercises. This overreaction includes inflammation and microtears, causing soreness.
- Tried a New Exercise: Seasoned lifters can experience soreness when introducing new or long-forgotten exercises, especially when transitioning from compound to isolation movements.
- Increased Volume: Exceeding your usual workout volume, such as adding more bicep exercises or increasing reps, sets, or load, can push muscles closer to their recovery threshold and lead to soreness.
- Different Tempo: Slowing down the eccentric contractions of an exercise, like the downward motion in bicep curls, can cause increased muscle soreness due to the lengthening and stress on muscles. For example, I recently did some very light but very slow Romanian deadlifts. My hamstrings were so sore it was hard to move my legs the next day, even though hamstring exercises and deadlifts are not a new stimulus to me.
If you’re returning to powerlifting after a long hiatus, check out these 7 rules for getting back into powerlifting after a break.
How To Treat Sore Arms After A Workout
Experiencing sore arms after a workout is common, especially following intense exercise or new routines. To alleviate discomfort and aid recovery, consider these effective tips:
- Light, Dynamic Stretching
- Heat or Cold Therapy
- Massage Therapy
- Drink Lots of Water
- Take an Anti-Inflammatory
- Refuel with Food
1. Light, Dynamic Stretching
To help your body naturally manage inflammation, it’s helpful to promote blood flow, which can be done through light activity.
You may benefit from dynamic movement throughout the day, walking, doing some stretches, using a foam roller, or engaging in some yoga-like activity. According to a study, this may temporarily relieve some muscle stiffness and help promote and hopefully speed up the healing.
If you’re a powerlifter who wants to take up yoga, check out my recommendations for balancing powerlifting training and yoga practice in my article Should Powerlifters Do Yoga? (Yes, Here’s 6 Poses).
2. Apply Heat or Cold Therapy
You can use heat or cold packs to reduce your pain and increase recovery. Use a heat pack to relax tight muscles or a cold pack to reduce inflammation and pain in excessively sore areas.
3. Massage Therapy
Massaging the sore muscles can increase blood flow and reduce muscle tightness, offering relief from discomfort.
4. Drink Lots of Water
Being hydrated before heading into your workout and staying hydrated after your workout will be integral to helping attenuate inflammation. Water helps flush toxins and move important substances throughout the bloodstream and into the muscles.
Therefore, ensuring water on hand will be important if you feel stiff.
5. Take an Anti-Inflammatory
Drugs like ibuprofen can be helpful if you’re struggling to get through your day. They work by decreasing overall inflammation and will ultimately relieve your pain.
One thing to note is that there have been some findings to suggest that consistent usage of anti-inflammatory drugs can have negative consequences on muscle building. However, take the findings with a grain of salt if you just take a single dose a day after a difficult workout.
6. Refuel With Food
Similarly to staying hydrated, ensuring you eat enough food with good nutrition will be important for your overall recovery. However, it likely won’t provide you with immediate relief.
Overall, a good diet full of carbs, fats, protein, and adequate calories will help increase your general recovery and potentially protect against long-drawn bouts of soreness.
This is also why if you are in a calorie deficit, you may notice increased difficulty with recovery over time.
Ensure you’re eating enough to support your training while still making healthy food choices by following the guidelines in my article Do Powerlifters Eat Whatever They Want? (No, Here’s Why).
How to Prevent Stiff, Sore Arms In Your Next Workout
If you can't straighten your arms after the gym, only so much can be done after the damage is there. But there are some strategies for preventing it from occurring.
Of course, you an always reduce the intensity of your workout, but here are some better options.
Here are 2 ways to prevent stiff arms after working out:
- Prime your muscles for new movements
- Spread out weekly volume goals
1. Prime Your Muscles for New Movements
As a more proactive approach, I strongly recommend priming your muscles for new movements as a novice or someone returning after a training hiatus.
You would do this by spending 1 week or so moving your body in the range of motion you wish but using very, very light weight. You should focus on just moving for the sake of moving without the goal of hitting any high intensities.
What this will do is, in essence, wake up your muscles in a gentler way so that when you go in the next week and do a more challenging set, the muscles aren’t caught off guard, and the recovery systems are in place.
If your biceps are sore after a workout and you’re looking for other ways to train on your bicep day, check out What Else Should I Do On Biceps Day? (4 Examples).
2. Spread Out Weekly Volume Goals
For those experiencing soreness because they have overdone the volume for a certain muscle group, it may be wise to split up your weekly volume throughout a few days.
You could try several bicep exercises across 2 to 3 days rather than doing a monster bicep workout in 1 day. This will be a more sustainable, long-term approach for most because it will help you avoid extreme soreness while allowing you to complete the same volume per week.
If you want to train the biceps muscle daily, learn how to do it safely and effectively in the article Is It Okay To Do Bicep Curls Every Day? (Yes, Here’s How).
How Long Will It Take For Your Arms To Return To Normal?
Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) will peak about 48 hours after a workout and progressively improve in the following days. If you are still feeling pain after a week, you may consider seeing a doctor to ensure you don't have bicep tendinitis.
In some cases, you may feel really stiff just a couple hours after a workout but then have no delayed onset muscle soreness the next day because you have recovered overnight.
In other cases, you may feel perfectly fine the same day of your workout but wake up feeling immobile and stiff. This is the classic case of DOMS, when the soreness comes later and typically peaks 2 days out from the workout.
Novices and those who have been away from the gym for a long period may find their soreness lasts more than 2 days. However, this will not persist beyond the first 2 weeks of returning to the gym and exercise.
If you experience bicep pain when doing bench presses, find out how you can fix it in How To Fix Bicep Pain During Bench Press (5 Tips).
FAQ
When Do Stiff Arms Become More Serious?
Stiff or sore muscles warrant concern if the soreness persists without recovery for over a week or is accompanied by other symptoms. Typical soreness feels like a widespread tenderness, affecting joint movement but not preventing it.
However, severe pain, joint swelling, loss of motion, dark or reduced urine output, or sharp pain during/after workouts could indicate serious issues, potentially muscle breakdown or injury. In such cases, seek medical attention. Normal soreness starts hours post-workout and should fade within 2-3 days without additional symptoms.
Should You Still Workout If Your Arms Are Sore?
If your arms are sore, you don't need to skip exercise entirely, but consider giving your arms a break. Avoid heavy upper-body workouts; focus on lower-body exercises with light upper-body movements. Warming up dynamically can improve blood circulation and reduce soreness. Alternatively, taking a day off allows muscle recovery and enhances your next training session.
About The Author
Elena Popadic has worked within the fitness industry for over 6 years, is co-host of the Squats and Thoughts podcast and trains and competes as a powerlifter. She has a BSc in Life Sciences from McMaster University, a Postgrad Certificate in Public Relations from Humber College and is currently pursuing a MSc Occupational Therapy at Western University. Connect with her on Instagram or LinkedIn.