If you’ve recently decided to start a fitness program for the first time, there’s no doubt that sometime soon; you’re going to experience some muscle soreness. This is very normal and natural for a beginner as their body adapts to the different exercises that are performed. However, this does not mean that you have to deal with muscle pain on an ongoing basis. By making a few adjustments to your plan, you can avoid so much pain and get back to the gym sooner. Here is how…

1. Exercise often. One of the most important ways to help combat muscle soreness is to increase the frequency of your training. You may think the opposite is true, but the more often you exercise, the better your body will adapt and adjust to the demands of exercise.

Obviously, you should do this because too much exercise for anyone will lead to pain or worse, injury, but going from working a muscle group once a week to twice a week, for example, can be very beneficial .

2. Post-exercise stretch. The next step to take to help avoid soreness is to stretch after your training session is over. This will help reduce any persistent tightness or tension in your muscles that later leads to muscle pain.

You’ll usually only need to stretch for 5-10 minutes after your session, so stretching at the end of your training session wouldn’t add a ton of extra time to your training plan. Commit to getting into the habit of doing this now, so it becomes automatic as you go along.

3. Only add one or two new exercises at a time. Finally, be sure to do one or two new exercises at a time. Naturally, when you start exercising, everything will be new, but as you progress, limit the number of new routines you add to your schedule each week.

It’s often the new exercises that tend to create the most pain, so by adding just one or two new moves to each workout, you’ll reduce the amount of potential pain you have.

If you keep these three points in mind and make sure you follow a healthy eating plan and get seven to eight hours of sleep each night, it should help minimize the amount of pain you have to deal with.