Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is a familiar experience for the elite or novice athlete. Symptoms can range from muscle tenderness to severe debilitating pain. The mechanisms, treatment strategies, and impact on athletic performance remain uncertain, despite the high incidence of DOMS. DOMS is most prevalent at the beginning of the sporting season when athletes are returning to training f...

Muscle pain after unaccustomed exercise is believed to result from repetitive active lengthening of skeletal muscle. This "eccentric exercise" initiates a sequence of events that includes muscle cytoskeletal breakdown, inflammation, and remodeling such that subsequent exercise sessions result in less injury and soreness. Recent studies of eccentric exercise using well-defined animal models have...

OBJECTIVE To determine the efficacy of transdermal ketoprofen in reducing delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS), limiting systemic absorption, and improving postexercise function following repetitive muscle contraction. DESIGN Double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. SETTING OrthoMed, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA, U.S.A. PARTICIPANTS Thirty-two healthy males ...

Australian Football is an intense team sport played over ~120 min on a weekly basis. To determine the effects of game and training load on muscle soreness and the time frame of soreness dissipation, 64 elite Australian Football players (age 23.8 ± 1.8 y, height 183.9 ± 3.8 cm, weight 83.2 ± 5.0 kg; mean ± SD) recorded perceptions of muscle soreness, game intensity, and training intensity on sca...