"I'm Not Sore After Class Anymore. Is It Still Working?" 🧡

This is one of the questions we get asked most at the desk, usually with a slightly worried face. Someone's been coming to Rise for a couple of months, they remember hobbling down the stairs after their first Reformer class, and now they wake up the morning after and feel... fine. Normal. Suspiciously normal.

Surely that means they need to work harder? Surely it's stopped doing anything?

Nope. Here's what's actually going on.

Where the soreness comes from

That ache you get a day or two after a new type of exercise has a name: delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS. It tends to show up somewhere between 12 and 72 hours after you've moved, peaks around the second day, and then fades.

It happens because you've asked your muscles to do something unfamiliar. Tiny amounts of stress in the muscle fibres, especially when they're working under load while lengthening (think the slow, controlled return on the Reformer carriage), trigger a repair response. That repair process is part of what makes you stronger. The ache is the side effect.

The key word there is unfamiliar. DOMS is your body's reaction to novelty, not a measure of how good the workout was.

Why it disappears

Your body is brilliant at adapting. Give it the same challenge a handful of times and it works out how to handle it. The muscle fibres get more resilient, your nervous system gets better at recruiting the right muscles at the right moment, and your coordination improves so you're no longer wasting effort on movements you haven't learned yet.

The result is that within a few weeks of regular classes, the same work that used to leave you aching for two days barely registers the next morning. This is called the repeated bout effect, and it's one of the clearest signs that training is doing exactly what it should.

So if you're not sore anymore, it means you've got stronger. It doesn't mean the class has stopped working. It means you've changed.

What to pay attention to instead

If soreness isn't the measure, what is? A few better signs that your Pilates is doing its job:

The shake. Trembling muscles during a class are a sign of fatigue, and fatigue is where adaptation happens. If your legs quiver in footwork or your abdominals flicker in the hundred, you're in the right place. Soreness fades with experience; the shake doesn't, if you keep the challenge appropriate.

Feeling it in the right place. As your body awareness improves, you'll start to notice the muscle that's meant to be working actually working. Glutes in a bridge, not hamstrings. Deep abdominals in a roll-down, not your neck. That precision is progress.

Things getting easier outside the studio. Carrying the shopping, getting up off the floor, standing at the kitchen counter without your back complaining. That's the whole point, and it's a far better barometer than how you feel on the stairs.

Being able to do more. Holding a plank a little longer. Going a spring heavier on the Reformer. Getting through a series without stopping. Progress is often quiet and gradual, and it's easy to miss if you're only looking for the ache.

Should you try to bring the soreness back?

Honestly, no. Chasing DOMS is a bit like judging a meal by how full you feel afterwards. It tells you something happened, but not whether it was good for you.

There is one useful thing to take from all this, though: if you've settled into a comfortable groove, it's worth gently nudging the challenge. That might mean going up a spring, choosing the harder option your instructor offers, trying a different class (Wunda Chair and Barre will find muscles that Reformer has stopped surprising), or simply paying closer attention to your form so the movement gets more precise rather than more forceful.

Progress at Rise is about doing things well, not doing things until they hurt. Your instructor will always give you an option to make something harder, and always give you an option to make it easier. Which one you take is your call.

The short version

Not being sore is normal, healthy, and a sign that your body has adapted. Look for the shake in class, the ease in everyday life, and the things you can do now that you couldn't a few months ago. That's what working looks like.

If you're ever unsure whether you're challenging yourself enough, ask us. We'd much rather have the conversation than watch you push through something that doesn't feel right.