This is not necessarily a fitness question persay, but i figured this would be the community to ask. About 3 months ago i started a new job, a factory job, where i’m constantly pushing and lifting tonnes of weight daily. i’ve gotten used to it, i don’t feel nearly as sore as i did when i started, the only thing is how i feel when i wake up.
you see, when i first wake up the first thing i notice is how stiff i am, literally it feels as though each of my individual muscles has turned into cold rubber. And the cracks! every time i move now something or another pops or cracks in any given part of my body. Suffice to say none of this is painful, just… uncomfortable. It’s not like they gave me a “how to adapt your body to suddenly doing manual labor 101” pamphlet when i joined, so what exactly should i be doing different? Or is this just a normal phenomenom that i’m not used to?
If you are aren’t recovering properly yes. Be sure to stretch and drink enough water.
I mean i feel fine, just super stiff, and i do drink plenty throughout the day since its a hot factory, i wonder though if feeling fine doesn’t neccisarily mean i’m recovering properly
Do more stretching. You are stiff because you aren’t stretching enough.
I stretch 12-15 minutes every morning. 3 sets of 4 or 5 stretches. Its amazing how tight I start and how loose I feel afterwards.
Hydrate, including electrolytes. Stretch. Eat proteins and green vegetables. Supplement magnesium, glucosamine and possibly arginine & glutamine. Wear high quality footwear.
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I used to have this problem. For me the main fix was making sure I ate enough fish and got my daily need for omega 3 fatty acid. An added improvement came a few months later when I started doing daily stretches and flexibility exercises.
Can you say more about the stretching and flexibility exercises? I need to find a good routine. I’m tired of feeling stiff…
I’ve had good luck simply searching for “stretche for x issue”. Probably the biggest thing is if you can’t do a stretch fully, don’t force it. Most stretches will have modifications you can do to make them easier.
This page from the Mayo Clinic is a good starting point
I can’t find the video I got them from. But they were very standard. Looking online for exercises that cover the neck, back, shoulders, arms and knees ought to get you there. I suspect anything will do as long as we stick to it for more than a week or two (easier said than done)
You don’t mention your age, so it’s hard to grasp any straws.
Try stretching immediately before and after work and also before you go to bed.
im 28 and male
Stretching is key to any sort of strenuous activity. Anecdotally, the amount of people in my high school marching band with bum hips/ankles/knees at the end of the season reduced dramatically when we implemented regular stretching blocks. First and last 15-20 minutes of the day (and returning from meal breaks) was a stretch block. Same story in college.
8 years of that still fucked up my joints pretty bad, but I’m sure it would’ve been much worse without it
This is probably a stupid question, but when do i stretch? as soon as i wake up? after work?
I have a short routine I do when I wake up. I’ll do a longer, more thorough one if I’m going to be doing anything strenuous. Beyond that, I do cool down stretches after exercising and a short routine before going to bed.
Yes.
Do it immediately after working out. If you have the time, also stretch when you wake up. Stretching before bed might also have the side benefit of helping you sleep better.
I can do before bed, but thing is, my workout is literally 8 hours long, I suppose I could do it after the first strenuous activity
At the end of the day, or maybe at lunch break
Check out this link for a bit of information.
If you don’t want to check the link, basically it says to drink water and stretch. But there is a name for it! DOMS
not sure if this anecdote is relevant to your situation, but after a very sedentary lifestyle for many years (im 37), I started a job which requires quite a lot of heavy lifting, and I’ve definitely noticed stiffness and pain in the muscles I’m using most, mainly my fingers and arm muscles. I can’t clench my fist without pain and I’ve also noticed that I lose circulation in my arms much more readily, sometimes just from sitting in one position for too long.
not sure what that’s about.
My gf also noticed pain in her hands when she started the job (shes doing the same thing in a different building) Might just be you weren’t used to gripping so much, for her i beleive it was trigger finger but worth getting a checkup for if it doesn’t go away
I had this so badly when starting manual labour at… probably 25, not sure. My fingers in the morning, holy shit. You are overdoing it, I know I was. I think it’s just from gripping things, and then swelling on the joints. I’d wake up with big sausage hands and spend ages rubbing my knuckles, which actually feels really nice.
Eat, sleep, and hydrate. Make sure you’re getting enough electrolytes if you’re sweating a lot. Try and calculate calories, you might not be getting enough for your activity level. Good luck, it’s hard but manageable. If I had to guess I’d say the main thing is hydration and electrolytes, since you have got over the initial hump. If I screw that up on one day, you can guarantee I’ll feel like shit the next.
Try making up a mix of salt according to the WHO reduced osmolarity ORS recipe, the proper one with the potassium. Mix it up at something like one quarter to one half the strength they recommend for dysentery, roughly ¼-½ teaspoon per litre. You don’t have to add the sugar, assuming you’re eating properly during the day it won’t be necessary. I’ll add a bit of sugar-free squash concentrate and it just tastes fruity, not like drinking salt water.
I also had to up my carbohydrate intake to the level of an endurance athlete, which is counter-intuitive if you’re used to being sedentary. But this was for heavy groundwork and construction, like 700g+ carbs per day. Might not be necessary for you but the difference was astonishing, just keeping that muscle glycogen topped up.
I’ve found it to be the opposite; if I don’t move enough for long enough, I get stiff and sore and any existing injuries feel worse. I think it’s at least partly due to my job, as it requires sitting for longer than a human being should.
Having done manual labor before changing careers, my experience aligns with what others have already said: hydration and stretching are your friends. To add to that, I found supplementing with creatine and BCAAs to be helpful when I was a package handler. Creatine is ridiculously expensive now, but might be worth the price if it makes you feel better.
ETA: hydration matters not just during your shifts, but also before and after work. If you don’t do this already, try drinking a few glasses of water before bed and see if it makes a difference in how you feel in the mornings. I tried it for a few days and it made waking up less painful, so I try to make sure I’m well-hydrated before bed.
It means you need to eat more, especially the right proportions of protein and carbs. You’re probably eating the same as you did when you were sedentary, which means that your muscles don’t have the required nutrients to recover and heal. Eat more food today and I bet the soreness goes away within hours.
