Irregular exercisers are more likely to experience injuries and discomforts such as muscle soreness and stitches. Muscle soreness develops as a result of minor tears in muscle tissue. Muscle soreness can result in the accumulation of fluid at the site of the injury, which contributes to the feeling of stiffness.

Stretching as a part of your warm-up or cool-down routine will help to prevent or reduce the amount of soreness or stiffness. If you progress gradually through your exercise programme, this will also prevent the development of muscle soreness and stiffness.

When you are experiencing stiffness or soreness, you should not attempt to move too quickly. To relieve the discomfort, you can do some mild stretching and low-intensity exercises to increase the blood flow and speed up recovery. A warm bath will also help to reduce discomfort. Monitor your heart rate to ensure that you are not exercising too hard.

Target heart rate

There are exercise guidelines that relate to your target heart rate. Intolerance to exercise can be reflected in your breathing, irregular heartbeat, nausea, developing a headache during exercise, dizziness, developing cramps, tightness in the chest or light-headedness. Any one or combinations of the signs indicate the need to slow down or stop the activity and seek advice or get medical help where necessary.

Your heart rate recovery is a good guide to how physically fit you are and how hard you can exercise. The higher your level of cardiorespiratory fitness, the faster your heart rate recovery will be, or the time it takes to recover will decrease as you continue to exercise. A good guide to use is a heart rate of 120 beats per minute. Five minutes after exercising, your heart rate should decrease to fewer than 120 beats per minute. If the rate is still above the 120 mark, it is quite likely that you have over-exercised or you have signs of some cardiovascular abnormality.

In stitches

Stitches or pains in your side basically occur in the early stages of an exercise routine. There are many theories about the cause of stitches. However, stitches tend to develop more frequently in people who are in poor physical condition, and are at the beginning of an exercise programme. Physically fit persons can also experience stitches if exercising at a higher intensity than usual.

As you improve your fitness, the regularity of stitches decreases and they eventually disappear if you exercise at an intensity that is within a safe, comfortable range. If stitches persist, you can slow down and monitor your body's response. Stop exercising if there is no improvement.

Stitches can be resolved quite successfully by lying on your back, bringing both knees slowly to your chest, and holding that position for about a minute. Stitches occur in some people if they eat or drink shortly before they exercise. Drinking cold fluids and too much before or during exercising also causes stitches in some people.

Dr Kenneth Gardner is anexercise physiologist at Holiday Hills Research Centre. Email: yourhealth@gleanerjm.com.