Fearing the next day’s soreness and stiffness, I pull out my Hyperice Hypervolt which is a vibration massage device for your muscle. Basically a foam roller on steroids. The purpose of foam rolling, massage and other forms of soft tissue work is to reduce soreness, relieve hypertonic muscles (aka “tight” muscles and restore natural range of motion through mechanical pressure. After 5 minutes of work, my quads, hamstrings and calves felt relieved and I had a nice rest after that. No soreness the next day for deadlifts even though I haven’t played basketball in over 2 years. Muscle soreness or DOMS occurs due to a combination of microscopic tears in the muscle from an unfamiliar high-level work on the muscle and an accumulation of metabolites (byproducts of burning energy in the muscle for exercise). I thought to myself how strange and why I wasn’t as sore as I anticipated?