Welcome to the Get Fit Guys, quick and dirty tips to slim down and shape up.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and I'm the Get Fit Guy.

In the movie No Pain, No Gain, which stars Dwayne, the Rock Johnson, and Marky Mark Wahlberg, a trio of bodybuilders in Florida,

get caught up in an extortion ring and a kidnapping scheme that goes terribly wrong.

It's actually a pretty good flick, and there are many scenes in the movie that involve a stereotypical

exercise scenario of grimacing dumbbell bicep curls, heavy and painful barbell squats,

and a host of other suggestions that exercise really has to hurt to be mildly successful.

But does it?

Well, in today's episode, we'll find out if that philosophy of no pain no gain is actually a good

approach to exercise and if it really is necessary for your workouts to hurt like that

we'll also figure out how sore you really should be after a workout contrary to

popular belief lactic acid that builds up during a workout does not actually cause muscle

soreness or muscle burning. Instead, these tiny protons called hydrogen ions are released as you

burn sugar for energy, such as when you're squatting a barbell or running on a treadmill.

And these hydrogen ions are acidic, so you feel this acidic burn as

you're doing that exercise. But while this acid contributes to the burn you feel during exercise,

it's not what makes you sore after you work out. In the episode, How to Make Your Muscles Bigger,

which I'll link to in the show notes over at quick and dirty

tips.com, you learned that when you require a muscle to produce a force, like when you're doing a

dumbbell biceps curl, most of those muscle fibers in your biceps are exposed to tension. The tension

from the weight of the dumbbells stretches the fibers and causes tiny tears in those fibers.

And when the cells in those muscle fibers sense that trauma, they begin to rally muscle building troops from other parts of your body to repair the torn fibers.

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