This is not necessarily a fitness question persay, but i figured this would be the community to ask. About 3 months ago i started a new job, a factory job, where i’m constantly pushing and lifting tonnes of weight daily. i’ve gotten used to it, i don’t feel nearly as sore as i did when i started, the only thing is how i feel when i wake up.
you see, when i first wake up the first thing i notice is how stiff i am, literally it feels as though each of my individual muscles has turned into cold rubber. And the cracks! every time i move now something or another pops or cracks in any given part of my body. Suffice to say none of this is painful, just… uncomfortable. It’s not like they gave me a “how to adapt your body to suddenly doing manual labor 101” pamphlet when i joined, so what exactly should i be doing different? Or is this just a normal phenomenom that i’m not used to?
Eat, sleep, and hydrate. Make sure you’re getting enough electrolytes if you’re sweating a lot. Try and calculate calories, you might not be getting enough for your activity level. Good luck, it’s hard but manageable. If I had to guess I’d say the main thing is hydration and electrolytes, since you have got over the initial hump. If I screw that up on one day, you can guarantee I’ll feel like shit the next.
Try making up a mix of salt according to the WHO reduced osmolarity ORS recipe, the proper one with the potassium. Mix it up at something like one quarter to one half the strength they recommend for dysentery, roughly ¼-½ teaspoon per litre. You don’t have to add the sugar, assuming you’re eating properly during the day it won’t be necessary. I’ll add a bit of sugar-free squash concentrate and it just tastes fruity, not like drinking salt water.
I also had to up my carbohydrate intake to the level of an endurance athlete, which is counter-intuitive if you’re used to being sedentary. But this was for heavy groundwork and construction, like 700g+ carbs per day. Might not be necessary for you but the difference was astonishing, just keeping that muscle glycogen topped up.