When you play a sport, do some physical activity, or workout then, injuries are bound to come with it. You must have seen all the famous sportspersons; they all go for some recoup period as and when they feel a strain in their body or feel they have overworked some part of the body.
Sometimes the intensity of the injury is so much that they have to undergo surgeries. So getting hurt and getting the muscles tired and weary is part and parcel of the fitness world. But what is important is getting back at it again and recovering correctly.
If you workout in the Fit Club Amersham, you are lucky enough because you will get proper guidance for all recovery programmes, including arm workouts. The soaring up of muscles is normal when you are working on your arms. Because the soaring of muscles is the physiological process through which they grow. But we need to be worried about if the same condition prolongs. Otherwise, it is normal when you can’t extend your arm after a workout. Some factors can contribute to this condition. For example, if you have tried a new exercise for your arm, increased the intensity of your workout, or just begun working out. Let us have a look at all the factors below.
Reasons Why You Can’t Extend Arm After Workout
1. Overdoing or Doing Too Much Of An Exercise
Once you join the gym, then you realise how much your body needs to show progress.It can be good for you if you see improvement by not doing intense exercise.
More than the body becomes habitual to that kind of workout. If someday you decide to change the tempo or switch to a problematic exercise, it may shock/hurt the body. There is a minimum requirement for the body to show progress; the same is valid with the upper side.
There is an upper threshold of how much you can push yourself. And the limit you have pushed yourself to, is capable of full or proper recovery? You may decide to stretch and overdo yourself because it is normal for people to try new exercises in the gym.
So whenever you want to increase the intensity of your workout, do it under proper guidance or have a personal trainer who can guide you through the appropriate way of doing it.
2. Inflammation And Increase In The Blood Flow
Whenever you work out to an intensity that you want to grow muscle, it causes micro-tears in the muscle fibers and their nerves. The tearing causes delayed onset muscle soreness which only lasts one or two days after the workout.
Now, our body has a mechanism of self-repair; to repair the damage, the blood flow to that area increases. So the increased blood flow can result in inflammation or blood soreness.
But the increase in blood flow is nothing to worry about because the blood has nutrients that work as a catalyst in the healing process. It regenerates the muscle tissue, increasing a person’s strength and overall performance.
But the increased blood flow can push on muscle fibers, making the muscle tender and resulting in pain. The pain will not allow you to extend your arm fully, keeping you from getting it straight.
After reaching a certain point, your brain signals the arm not to go any further because the pain in the fibers becomes so intense that you cannot control it with your conscious mind.
3. Tried A New Workout
A new workout can have the same effect on you, like when you change the intensity. So even if a person has been working out for a long time and has left doing a particular exercise, he can still have sore muscles.
For example, if a seasoned person who has been lifting weights for some years now tries doing an exercise, he left a long time ago. This is because exercise can cause muscle soreness in the body. This happens with many weightlifters and powerlifters who focus only on compound movements and do not do isolation workouts as much.
So if you do a single exercise as your muscle workout and one day you do three different exercises with good reps, you are bound to experience muscle soreness the day after.
4. Cellular Damage
Here is another reason you need help with the proper extension of your arm. If you struggle to extend your elbow, then another reason can be the structures that support the bicep muscles.
The cells of our muscles have a net-like structure that surrounds the cells. The form is called the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR). Why is SR essential for our body? Because it plays a significant role in relaxing and contracting the muscles.
The SR releases calcium into the muscle cells, and that calcium acts like the key that unlocks muscles to allow their movement. So it must release calcium for you to extend your arm entirely straight.
So heavy exercise’s effect on the muscles is that SR stops releasing calcium, and there won’t be any relaxation within them. No calcium means there can be muscle pain and stiffness that will restrict entire movement.
Final Word
When you can’t extend arm after workout is known as delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). So if you have DOMS, the pain will be the worst for the first 48 hours, after which it will start getting better.
We cannot precisely state when the pain will be gone, but it does settle in a couple of days. So you should skip the gym for some days and do gentle range-of-motion movements to aid recovery and increase blood flow.
Why Come To Fit Club Amersham?
Fit Club Amersham is the perfect spot for your workouts because we have professionals handling things like these. For example, if you can’t extend your arm after a workout, our Personal trainers in Amersham can help you with exercises that make your muscles gelled up to movements.
So what are you waiting for? Come to fitness at Fit Club Amersham! Contact us at 01494 432088 or email info@fitclubamersham.co.uk to get started.
Start your fitness journey today by reaching us here!
