A Prominent Exercise Scientist Explains the Old School Way to Use Muscle Soreness for Growth
If you feel sore after a tough day of lifting at the gym, that obviously means your muscles are growing-right? Technically, the jury is still out on that one. But according to Mike Israetel, PhD, co-founder of RP Strength, soreness may still have value as a tool for building muscle, even if the science hasn't fully proven the relationship quite yet.
"For me, I think soreness has something to do with growth in a way that's algorithmic and can, in part, along with other variables, inform your decision-making process about, for example, training volume, or exercise selection," Israetel tells Men's Journal.
The perpetual debate between science-based and bro-style lifting remains, and Israetel admits that many on the evidence-based side would likely push back on his idea. And to be fair, there's limited direct research isolating soreness as a predictor of hypertrophy. Plus, the research that is out there doesn't necessarily support it as a standalone indicator.
Related: Add These 3 Eccentric Exercises to Your Leg Day to Trigger New Growth and Save Your Knees
For instance, one 2024 study found traditional resistance training, pre-exhaustion training, and drop set training to all produce similar improvements in muscular strength, endurance, and hypertrophy over six weeks when total training volume was matched. Each group saw significant gains with no meaningful differences between methods, though the drop set group experienced more fatigue and soreness overall.
Still, Israetel argues that a lack of direct evidence doesn't automatically make soreness irrelevant. Instead, he points to a wider range of related findings that suggests there's likely some connection. Many of the same training variables associated with muscle growth, like training volume, eccentric-focused exercises, and novel movements, also tend to increase soreness.
We're not telling you to go out and intentionally start chasing soreness as a measurement of your progress. Rather, it could be viewed as one tiny piece of a much larger puzzle alongside progressive overload, recovery, and overall training quality to assess whether your program is working.
Related: Is Cardio Actually Killing Your Gains? An Exercise Scientist Sets the Record Straight
This story was originally published by Men's Journal on May 28, 2026, where it first appeared in the Health & Fitness section. Add Men's Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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This story was originally published May 28, 2026 at 10:30 AM.