Is Being Sore the Day After a Sign of a Good Workout?

Short answer: no, not reliably — soreness and muscle growth are only loosely connected, and treating one as proof of the other leads people to chase the wrong thing entirely.

What the evidence says

The idea feels intuitive: hurt = worked = growing. It's also one of the more directly-tested myths in exercise science, and the testing doesn't hold up. A study by Nosaka, Newton, and Sacco (published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 2002) measured delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) alongside objective markers of muscle damage — force loss and creatine kinase levels, both real, measurable indicators of what a muscle actually went through. The correlation between how sore people felt and how much measurable damage occurred was weak. Their conclusion, plainly stated: DOMS is a poor reflector of the muscle damage that caused it, let alone of the growth that follows.

Two everyday observations make the same point without needing a lab. First, running produces plenty of DOMS in most people — anyone who's hobbled down stairs after a first long run in months knows this — yet running drives minimal muscle hypertrophy. If soreness reliably signaled growth, runners would be some of the most muscular people around; they aren't, because soreness and hypertrophy are triggered by overlapping but distinct processes. Second, within a single training session, some muscles reliably get sorer than others — quads and hamstrings are notorious for it, deltoids much less so — even though all of them are capable of growing. If soreness tracked growth directly, that pattern wouldn't make sense; muscles don't take turns being allowed to adapt.

None of this means soreness is meaningless — it's a real signal that a muscle experienced unfamiliar or eccentric-heavy stress, which is why it shows up hardest after a new exercise, a long layoff, or an unusually heavy eccentric (lowering) phase. It just isn't a growth scoreboard. A well-programmed, appropriately progressive training block often produces less soreness over time as your body adapts to the routine — while still building muscle the entire time. Chasing soreness as the goal can actively work against you: it pushes people toward novelty (new exercises every session, for the "shock") over the boring consistency that progressive overload actually needs to compound.

Run your own experiment

Two weeks, tracking the thing that actually matters instead of the thing that feels like it should:

1. Keep your program identical for two weeks — same exercises, same rough structure — and log soreness (1–10) after each session alongside your actual numbers (weight, reps, reps in reserve).
2. Watch what happens to soreness as the two weeks go on. For most people, it drops noticeably by the second week, even as effort stays the same or numbers keep climbing.
3. That gap — soreness falling while performance holds or improves — is the real story. Your body adapted to the stress (less soreness) while still progressing (same or better numbers). Soreness was never the signal; the numbers were.

FAQ

So why do I get sore at all if it doesn't mean growth? Soreness tracks unfamiliar mechanical and eccentric stress on a muscle — new exercises, longer ranges of motion, or a layoff all trigger it regardless of whether meaningful growth follows.

Should I worry if I'm never sore anymore? No — reduced soreness on a consistent program is a normal adaptation, not a sign you've stopped stimulating growth. Check your actual numbers (weight, reps) instead.

Does more soreness at least mean more effort that session? Not reliably — effort and soreness are only loosely linked, and factors like exercise selection (more eccentric-heavy movements) affect soreness independent of how hard you actually trained.

What should I track instead of soreness? The same things that answer "am I overloading" — the weight and reps on your key lifts, trending over weeks, not the ache the next morning.

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Chasing soreness instead of numbers is an easy trap to fall into alone — the tribe at imbatribe.com is a decent place to get talked out of it.