My stomach muscles are sore for no reason

Which Stomach Muscles Can Get Strained?

It’s possible to pull any of the key muscle groups that make up your abs:

Oblique muscles. These go from your ribs to your pelvis. They help you rotate your midsection left and right.

Rectus abdominus muscles. These are the pair of muscles that extend down the middle of your abdomen from your ribs to your pelvis. When they’re really fit, you know them as a “six pack.” They make movement between your pelvis and ribs possible.

Transversus abdominus muscles. These are your deepest ab muscles. They help keep your midsection stable and shield organs.

What Can Cause an Abdominal Strain?

It usually happens when you use the muscle over and over so much that you damage it. For example, you could stretch or tear an abdominal muscle by making repetitive movements while playing sports or doing other physical activities, like situps or crunches.

Some other things that could strain a stomach muscle are:

• Accidents, like falling or getting in a car crash
• Coughing or sneezing hard or for a while
• Exercising too much or too intensely
• Doing something that your muscle isn’t warmed up for
• Not using the right form when you play sports or work out
• Lifting something heavy
• Twisting your body sharply

Who’s More Likely to Get an Abdominal Strain?

Your chances for the injury go up if you play sports like football and tennis. That’s because those games involve a lot of reaching and moving your midsection side to side.

Other things that could make you more likely to strain a stomach muscle are:

• A past stomach muscle strain or injury
• Muscle fatigue, which can happen after you do something strenuous
• Tight ab muscles

What Does a Strained Abdominal Muscle Feel Like?

You could have stomach pain that flares up or gets worse when you:

• Sneeze, cough, or laugh
• Twist your body
• Sprint or do brisk exercise
• Get up after sitting or lying down a while
• Touch the strained area

You might also have symptoms like:

• Stiffness
• Swelling or bruising
• Muscle cramps

Call the doctor right away if you have:

• Trouble walking
• Pain that keeps you from doing your daily routine or getting sleep
• Symptoms of a hernia, which is when part of an internal organ or tissue pushes through a weak section of muscle

Get emergency medical help if your abdominal pain is sudden and severe and comes with any of these symptoms, which would be signs of something more serious than an abdominal strain:

• Fever
• Black or bloody vomit or poop
• Constant nausea and vomiting
• Your stomach is very tender to the touch or when you press on it
• Your stomach is swollen

How Do Doctors Diagnose an Abdominal Strain?

Your doctor can often diagnose a strained stomach muscle by giving you a physical exam, asking you about your symptoms, and discussing how you got injured.

Depending on how you got hurt and what kinds of symptoms you have, they might also give you an X-ray to look for any ribcage injuries, backbone fractures, or other bone breaks.

If the doctor suspects that your pain is not a strained muscle, they may order other tests, including blood tests, stool tests, urine tests, ultrasounds, CT scans, or endoscopies to find out the cause.

How Do You Heal an Abdominal Strain?

Rest helps the injury heal. Your doctor might also recommend treatments like these:

• Switch between putting an ice pack and a warm compress on the strained muscle.
• Get physical therapy to learn how to stretch and strengthen your stomach muscles.
• Take NSAID drugs like aspirin, ibuprofen, or naproxen to lessen to pain and inflammation.
• Wear an abdominal brace to support your stomach muscles and bring down swelling.

How Long Does It Take for Abdominal Strains to Heal?

Most people with this injury heal up in a few weeks. Ask your doctor when you can get back to doing your usual activities.

When it comes to sore abs, we’ve all been there. In our quest to strengthen our core, we load up on planks, sit-ups, dead bugs, and more ab exercises during our workouts. You may feel great immediately after, but then the next morning, you regret it when you can barely sit up in bed and you realize you’ve got some seriously sore abs that make everyday activities difficult.

Like the rest of your muscles, your abdominals and obliques, along with the rest of your core movers and stabilizers are susceptible to delayed onset muscles soreness (a.k.a. DOMS), the painful inflammation caused by micro-tears in overworked muscles.

“Generally you stay sore for about two days, and [the feeling] diminishes as the inflammation goes down and your body gets rid of the fluid,” explains David Costill, Ph.D., director emeritus of the Human Performance Laboratory at Ball State University. Still, when the inflammation is in your core—which is so essential to daily functions such as sitting, standing, and breathing—it can feel debilitating.

Here are a few strategies to help remedy your sore abs and get you belly-laughing again in no time.

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In a perfect world, you could soak in a steamy bath until your soreness subsided. However, a hot water bottle or heat wrap can do the trick just as well. The goal is to heat up your muscles to increase blood flow in and out of the damaged area, which also speeds up the delivery of healing nutrients and the removal of metabolic waste.

Apply a warm compress or bottle for 15 to 20 minutes at a time to relax stiff muscles and improve healing circulation.

Even though it may feel counterintuitive, a little motion is actually exactly what your cranky muscles need. Research shows that active recovery—gently moving your muscles—helps relieve postexercise soreness, likely by stimulating circulation.

Gently stretch your obliques by lying on your back, pulling your knees up toward your chest and then gently dropping your legs from side to side. Soothe overworked abs by flipping over so you’re facedown, with your hands flat on the floor on either side of your chest. Slowly straighten your arms, lifting your head, shoulders, and torso off the ground as far as comfortably possible like an upward dog pose in yoga (as shown).

As cyclists, we talk a lot about compression socks, but your calves aren’t the only hard working muscles that appreciate a good squeeze now and then. Compression base layers like 2XU compression tops () can support your sore muscles and improve circulation, so you feel better while your muscles recover.

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“When you do an activity you’re unaccustomed to, the contractions necessary are novel to your muscles,” says Costill. Those fibers won’t be as efficient as if you were doing an activity you practice regularly; some will be firing incorrectly and some will be tensing up.

In other words, the new movement will beat those muscles up a little extra. (Hence the sore abs.) So rather than sporadically hitting your core with a surprise movement every few months, set yourself up for success (and less pain) by making core work a regular part of your routine.

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