A healthy supply of these nutrients will help minimize pain the day after your workout and will speed the healing process as your body rebuilds its muscle tissue. To test the effects of vitamin C in preventing muscle soreness, researchers at Western States Chiropractic College gave 3,000 milligrams of vitamin C to a group of students. Another group of students received placebos. After both groups had been taking pills for three days, the students who took vitamin C developed significantly less muscle soreness after exercising than the group that took the placebos. Following an injury, even a minor one like a sore muscle, the body needs to make more collagen to repair the damaged tissue.
Vitamin E helps reduce muscle soreness, prevent cellular damage, and repair muscle tissue.
To get your dose of pain prevention, take 2,000 milligrams of vitamin C in divided doses each day, along with 400 international units of vitamin E, says Dr. Stengler. Train without Pain Siberian ginseng , an herb used by Russian cosmonauts and Asian Olympic athletes, can help you train for your next marathon or your next curtsy before the Queen. The herb helps the adrenal glands produce more stress hormones. Those stress hormones, in turn, help your body recover more quickly from the effects of strenuous or muscle-straining exercise. The name Siberian ginseng is really a misnomer, since the plant is not even in the same genus as true ginseng .