Everyone has experienced it –you get home after training, your leg muscles are hurting slightly, but you just go to bed thinking that you have put in a good training. However, the next day comes the ugly realization: you have woken up with fierce muscle pain.

It was long suspected that acidification of the muscles was the cause of muscle ache. This has however been disproved. Rather, the reason is that overloading the muscles causes small tears to develop in the muscle tissue. If these tears get inflamed due to the penetration of water, the muscles swell up. Because this process does not occur straight away, our muscles only start to ache 12 to 24 hours after exercising. Especially after weight training and abrupt braking exercises, where extreme sudden demands are placed on the muscles, muscle tears will tend to develop quicker.

Muscle ache occurs only when training has overloaded the athlete. Therefore the training was not really good, because it caused an injury. Earlier, many believed that muscle ache was a sign of hard, but good training.

No, not really!You can imagine that massaging muscles, which contain tears, does not really make sense. You will tend to worsen matters.

I have to admit that, for a long time, I believed that stretching helped me. But far from it,even stretching usually makes things worse. It is actually logical; you don’t want to exert damaged muscles any more.

There is a reason why many teams employ "cooling down sessions". Using an apparently light workout, you achieve the same effect, even by cycling, for example, or easy soccer training sessions. Get your team to run 3-4 laps slowly and in a relaxed manner, 20-30 minutes after exertion. It is important to stimulate muscle recovery. The quicker relaxation sets in, the less worried you need be about getting muscle ache.

You have to sort of "ease into" more intense playing and for long time-periods: you are finding out the hard way what happens when you just go at it full-on without proper preparation and starting easy and working up the big Time. You can help your aches and pains by a few things, however:

1) STRETCH: proper stretching is REALLY helpful for not getting aches and pains so much. Stretching is best done after a warm-up: stretching on cold muscles is a recipe for doing yourself more harm than good. Stretching should also be done after a game or workout, and just before going to bed - but a bit more gently before going to bed, since your muscles are not warmed up.  Stretching should be done GENTLY - never bounce or do it quickly, or you risk tearing the muscles. Also, it should not hurt: if it does you are going too far: back off a bit.  When you reach as far as you can go without pain, hold the stretch for at least 30 seconds, and a whole minute is even better: this is VERY important: when you hold a stretch, you are getting your muscles used to their longer, more relaxed position. A stretch which is not held, is useless, so be sure to hold it for a full 30 seconds to a minute. Ask your coach to show you proper stretches for the different muscles.

 2) Drink lots of water : water gives your body energy, and helps carry away waste products that your muscles create when they are used. There is one easy way to tell if you are getting enough water: the color of your pee (urine) should be quite pale: if it is yellow, you are not getting enough water. Energy drinks don't count, by the way.

3) Get some raw ginger, and put a few pieces of it in your food in the meal after playing or working out: this will help reduce soreness, believe it or not. Other excellent "anti-inflammatory" foods (inflammation is caused by hurt and over-used muscles and "anti-inflammatory agents especially foods, reduce it and help you heal a lot faster) are broccoli (can be tasty with butter, lemon juice or vinegar), avocados, salmon, sardines and mackerel, curry (the tumeric in curry is a wonderful anti-inflammatory food), blueberries and other berries, papayas and sweet potatoes. Here is a website which lists other anti-inflammatory foods:  http://www.metabolismadvice.com/anti_inf .Trust me these really help!!!

4) Cut down on meats like beef, pork, chicken, etc. Also, avoid processed meats like bacon, pepperoni, luncheon meats and other non-natural meat products: these can cause inflammation and are not healthy for you at all.

5) Cut down on Junk foods, fried foods, white bread (whole grains are MUCH better) and cheese are also no-nos for someone cutting down on muscle pains.

6) Get enough sleep: teens need more sleep than pre-teens because your body is growing and changing very quickly. This is a hard one, but believe me it makes a HUGE difference!

7) Take a couple of days off per week, where you don't do much that is really hard physically. This will give your muscles a chance to rest and repair themselves.