The morning after your first training session in a while is not a fun day. Your muscles are going to ache and everything is going to hurt a little.
This is called “DOMS”, or “Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness.” It’s also a breaking point for many who want to get back into shape. All the good intentions in the world, undone by 2-3 days of soreness, then months later the good intentions resurface and the cycle repeats.
The real secret to beating this, is to keep going. It’s a temporary issue, and once your body gets used to training again it will practically disappear.
In the mean time you can help reduce it. What you want to do is increase circulation to the effected muscles. This can be done with light stretching, heat packs, massage, hot baths or, perhaps counter-intuitively, more exercise.
In fact, exercise is probably the best way to remedy sore-muscles. It gets the blood flowing which helps loosen things up, and the exercise itself increases your pain thresholds and tolerance. You don’t want to overdue it on already damaged, but go for a light jog or do some light cardio work and you will feel better.
At the end of the day though just remember, if you want to get results you have to push yourself and your body past its current comfort zone. The first few times you do that, it’s not going to like it. But once you have weathered that early storm you are well on your way to getting those results.
You can think of it almost like withdrawal symptoms from not exercising. They will peak early, and occasionally you’ll get the odd resurfacing. But if you make it through them you’ll feel far better once they pass.