Endurance performance is always accompanied by minute lesions of muscles, tendons, connective tissue and capillaries. These micro traumata are the preconditions that muscles adapt and allow a performance on a higher level.
The lesions can apply to muscle cell membranes, single fibers or bundles of fibers. Depending on the dimensions of the lesions muscle pains occur. Tendons and connective tissue suffer from ruptures as well. Small vessels can tear apart.
Micro-lesions happen due to the mechanical forces on the locomotor system, temperature changes within the tissue, disturbances of blood circulation, pH changes and the piling up of oxygen free radicals. The degree of muscle lesions can vary, but it is impossible to avoid, if your goal is to achieve some training effect. Injuries induce the inflammatory process that is the precondition for healing and adaptation of muscles to a higher level of performance. Both are interdependent processes initiated, controlled and performed by the immune system. An intact immune system needs 3 to 5 days for the healing of these micro-lesions.
It is definitely a high skill to dose the training load in a way that muscle lesions are not too massive. If you do otherwise you may suffer from DOMS* that is a well known complication of a training overload among elite athletes. Muscle pain is subsequently not caused by excessive lactate production but by inflammatory substances.
If micro-lesions don’t heal due to an impaired immune system and lacking recovery times, then muscle ruptures or injuries of tendons may occur. The consequences may be delayed healing processes and an increased disposition for injuries.
As there are never all muscle fibers activated at a time – recent studies talk of a maximum of 50% in elite athletes – the muscle tissue tolerates overloads comparatively long. Fibers are activated following a sort of rotation principle. Even during one and the same training cycle the activation pattern of fibers changes. For this reason parts of the same muscle have time to regenerate, even if the the muscle as such does not get sufficient time for regeneration.
*delayed onset of muscle soreness
And did you know already…
…, that biestmilch modulates inflammatory processes and therefore influences recovery positively?
Biestmilch (Colostrum) is like an immune serum. It strengthens immunity, but not only in the sense of containing infections. Also other healing processes are fostered, as there are the muscle lesions occurring during training.
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