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?
You don't mention your age, so it's hard to grasp any straws.
Try stretching immediately before and after work and also before you go to bed.
im 28 and male
Stretching is key to any sort of strenuous activity. Anecdotally, the amount of people in my high school marching band with bum hips/ankles/knees at the end of the season reduced dramatically when we implemented regular stretching blocks. First and last 15-20 minutes of the day (and returning from meal breaks) was a stretch block. Same story in college.
8 years of that still fucked up my joints pretty bad, but I'm sure it would've been much worse without it
This is probably a stupid question, but when do i stretch? as soon as i wake up? after work?
Do it immediately after working out. If you have the time, also stretch when you wake up. Stretching before bed might also have the side benefit of helping you sleep better.
I can do before bed, but thing is, my workout is literally 8 hours long, I suppose I could do it after the first strenuous activity
At the end of the day, or maybe at lunch break
Yes.
I have a short routine I do when I wake up. I'll do a longer, more thorough one if I'm going to be doing anything strenuous. Beyond that, I do cool down stretches after exercising and a short routine before going to bed.