The effects of yoga training and a single bout of yoga on delayed onset muscle soreness in the lower extremity
Two pages on PainSci cite Boyle 2004: 1. A Deep Dive into Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness 2. Should you exercise when you’re still sore from the last workout?
original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of yoga training and a single bout of yoga on the intensity of delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). 24 yoga-trained (YT; n = 12) and non-yoga-trained (CON; n = 12), matched women volunteers were administered a DOMS-inducing bench-stepping exercise. Muscle soreness was assessed at baseline, 24, 48, 72, 96, and 120 hours after bench-stepping using a Visual Analog Scale (VAS). Groups were also compared on body awareness (BA), flexibility using the sit-and-reach test (SR), and perceived exertion (RPE). Statistical significance was accepted at p = 0.05. A 2 x 2 mixed factorial ANOVA with repeated measures at 24 and 48 hours revealed a significant (p < 0.05) group main effect with VAS scores greater for CON than YT. Paired t-tests revealed that in YT, VAS scores were higher before yoga class than after yoga class at 24 hours (21.4 [+/- 6.9] mm vs. 11.1 [+/- 4.1] mm; p = 0.02). The SR was greater in YT than in CON (65.0 [+/- 7.9] cm vs. 33.3 [+/- 7.0] cm; p < 0.01); however, no differences were found between yoga and control in BA (94.0 [+/- 4.4] units vs. 83.8 [+/- 3.7] units; p = 0.21) or in RPE at 5-minute intervals (2.9 [+/- 0.3], 5.3 [+/- 0.8], 5.8 [+/- 0.9], and 5.2 [+/- 0.8] vs. 2.5 [+/- 0.3], 4.0 [+/- 0.5], 4.2 [+/- 0.3], and 4.9 [+/- 0.4]. Yoga training and a single bout of yoga appear to attenuate peak muscle soreness in women following a bout of eccentric exercise. These findings have significant implications for coaches, athletes, and the exercising public who may want to implement yoga training as a preseason regimen or supplemental activity to lessen the symptoms associated with muscle soreness.
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
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- Fibromyalgia diagnosis and biased assessment: Sex, prevalence and bias. Wolfe 2018 PLoS One.
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