Is soreness a sign of muscle growth? It can accompany training that eventually builds muscle, but soreness alone cannot tell you whether growth occurred, and growth can happen without soreness.
About the featured illustration: It depicts apparent back discomfort, which cannot be identified as DOMS or an injury from a picture. Pain is not evidence of muscle growth or a training result to pursue.
That answer has two parts: soreness is not required for growth, and soreness by itself does not prove growth. Delayed-onset muscle soreness, or DOMS, is a symptom after an unfamiliar or demanding activity, while hypertrophy is a change in muscle tissue measured over a longer period.
The useful alternative is a small training record that connects completed work to the goal you actually want to improve. The four-week example below shows how less soreness can coexist with more controlled repetitions at the same load without pretending that either measure reveals muscle size.
1. Familiarity changes the soreness response
A familiar session can feel different from an unfamiliar one because repeated exposure to eccentric exercise can reduce the damage response to a later similar bout, an adaptation known as the repeated bout effect (McHugh, 2003).
Eccentric contractions occur when a muscle produces force while lengthening, such as during the lowering phase of many resistance exercises.
The response depends on the activity and person, so a review of eccentric exercise does not establish a fixed protection period or the same response for every training method (McHugh, 2003).
In your own log, note when you introduce an exercise, change its range of motion or return after time away, because those details help explain why two sessions are difficult to compare.
2. Detectable damage is not required for growth
Flann and colleagues studied 14 healthy university students using a specialized high-force eccentric cycling program, with one group completing three weeks of gradual preparation and the other beginning without that preparation (Flann et al., 2011).
The groups showed different initial soreness and damage markers but no statistically significant difference in their subsequent muscle size or strength gains (Flann et al., 2011).
Quadriceps muscle volume increased by 6.5 percent in the prepared group and 7.5 percent in the initially unprepared group, while strength increased by approximately 25 and 26 percent respectively (Flann et al., 2011).
The study supports the possibility of growth without discernible initial damage, but its small sample and unusual training method limit how precisely the results describe ordinary gym programs.
Those percentages are group averages from that study, not a forecast for your own lifts or body composition.
3. Early repair is different from lasting growth
A separate 2016 study followed ten young men across ten weeks of resistance training, measuring muscle protein synthesis, damage and muscle fibre size at different stages (Damas et al., 2016).
The first exercise response produced the largest measured protein synthesis and damage responses, but those early responses did not correlate with later muscle growth (Damas et al., 2016).
At weeks three and ten, after damage had declined, the protein synthesis response was correlated with hypertrophy, and increases in muscle fibre size were detected at week ten (Damas et al., 2016).
That finding concerns laboratory measurements and timing, not a rule that every sore feeling represents wasted work or that a particular week guarantees growth.
4. Soreness varies across people and muscles
Schoenfeld and Contreras’s 2013 review described a poor relationship between soreness and the extent or timing of exercise-induced damage, alongside differences in how people and muscles experience soreness (Schoenfeld & Contreras, 2013).
The review also discussed a possible role for muscle damage in hypertrophy, so presenting it as proof that damage has no role would misstate its historical interpretation.
Its practical conclusion was narrower: soreness should not serve as a definitive gauge of training results, especially when discomfort becomes excessive (Schoenfeld & Contreras, 2013).
Choose a measure connected to your goal, such as the repetitions completed at a recorded load with comparable technique, and retain soreness as a separate observation.
5. Excessive soreness can interfere with training
The 2013 review cautioned that excessive soreness can interfere with subsequent exercise performance and motivation, rather than recommending that lifters actively pursue it (Schoenfeld & Contreras, 2013).
It gives you a concrete question to record: did the discomfort change how you moved, the work you completed or whether you could undertake the next planned activity?
The American College of Sports Medicine’s 2026 guidance emphasizes consistent resistance training tailored to individual goals, and notes that training to momentary failure does not consistently improve outcomes for the average healthy adult (American College of Sports Medicine [ACSM], 2026).
You can pursue an appropriate training challenge while tracking the actual work and recovery, without adopting soreness or complete exhaustion as a universal success criterion.
What to record in a training log
Keep the record short enough to complete after an ordinary session, using the same fields each time so that later comparisons have a clear basis.
- Exercise and setup: Record the movement, equipment and any meaningful change in range or technique.
- Completed work: Write the load, sets and repetitions actually performed, including units.
- Effort: Add a consistent description of how demanding the sets felt, without confusing an estimate with a precise measurement.
- Attendance: Note whether the planned session happened and the practical reason for a change.
- Recovery and symptoms: Record soreness separately, along with anything that affected movement or the next session.
These fields are an original editorial tracking aid, not a validated score or a complete prescription for load, volume or recovery time.
Our guide to five fitness basics when progress stalls covers other factors to consider when reviewing a training plan.
A four-week example: less soreness, more controlled reps
The table is a fictional tracking example, not a study result or training prescription. Imagine one person repeating the same dumbbell press with the same 20-pound dumbbells, range of motion, rest periods and controlled technique across four weeks.
| Week | Completed press work | Next-day soreness note | What the entry can tell you |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Two sets of 8 with 20-pound dumbbells | 6 out of 10 after trying the movement | A new movement was followed by discomfort; muscle growth was not measured. |
| 2 | Two sets of 8 with 20-pound dumbbells | 2 out of 10 | Comparable work with less soreness; neither gain nor loss in size is established. |
| 3 | Two sets of 10 with 20-pound dumbbells | 1 out of 10 | More repetitions under the same described conditions show improved task performance. |
| 4 | Two sets of 11 with 20-pound dumbbells | 1 out of 10 | Another controlled repetition at the same load shows improved task performance, not measured muscle size. |
The numbers above are fictional self-reports, not a validated symptom score or a prediction of what any reader should lift. The relevant contrast is that soreness fell while controlled repetitions increased at the same load, so the ache alone would have been a misleading scoreboard.
If the exercise setup, effort or rest periods changed, note those too before comparing weeks. A performance log helps you ask better questions, while actual muscle-size changes require an appropriate measurement and more time than next-day soreness.
Compare sessions before changing the plan
If load or repetitions change, check what happened to the exercise setup, rest periods and technique before interpreting the difference as a change in strength.
More weight with a different movement or much shorter range is a different comparison from more weight under the same agreed conditions.
For context on exercise outcomes, our guide to low and high repetitions separates strength and muscle size instead of assuming that one number describes both.
A training log cannot identify the cause of pain
A soreness rating does not establish whether a symptom is routine soreness, an injury or another condition. Ask an appropriate healthcare professional about pain or symptoms that concern you rather than using a training-progress table to diagnose them.
The takeaway
Is soreness a sign of muscle growth? It may appear alongside a useful training stimulus, but it is neither a requirement for growth nor proof that growth occurred.
Record the exercise, completed work, effort, attendance and symptoms, then compare the outcome relevant to your goal under conditions you can describe.
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References
American College of Sports Medicine. (2026, March 17). ACSM publishes updated resistance training guidelines. https://acsm.org/resistance-training-guidelines-update-2026/
Cleveland Clinic. (2025, December 19). Delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/delayed-onset-muscle-soreness
Damas, F., Phillips, S. M., Libardi, C. A., Vechin, F. C., Lixandrão, M. E., Jannig, P. R., Costa, L. A. R., Bacurau, A. V., Snijders, T., Parise, G., Tricoli, V., Roschel, H., & Ugrinowitsch, C. (2016). Resistance training-induced changes in integrated myofibrillar protein synthesis are related to hypertrophy only after attenuation of muscle damage. The Journal of Physiology, 594(18), 5209 to 5222. https://doi.org/10.1113/JP272472
Flann, K. L., LaStayo, P. C., McClain, D. A., Hazel, M., & Lindstedt, S. L. (2011). Muscle damage and muscle remodeling: No pain, no gain? The Journal of Experimental Biology, 214(4), 674 to 679. https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.050112
McHugh, M. P. (2003). Recent advances in the understanding of the repeated bout effect: The protective effect against muscle damage from a single bout of eccentric exercise. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 13(2), 88 to 97. https://doi.org/10.1034/j.1600-0838.2003.02477.x
Schoenfeld, B. J., & Contreras, B. (2013). Is postexercise muscle soreness a valid indicator of muscular adaptations? Strength and Conditioning Journal, 35(5), 16 to 21. https://doi.org/10.1519/SSC.0b013e3182a61820
Medical disclaimer: This article is general fitness information, not medical advice or an individualized training plan. If you have an injury, ongoing pain or a medical condition, ask a doctor or physical therapist about appropriate activity.
