If you’ve noticed that lifting weights triggers muscle twitching in the muscles you worked, find out if you should be worried about this.
So you go into the gym and lift weights hard, feeling like a beast after the workout, only to be reduced to a bundle of nerves because the muscle you worked won’t stop twitching.
This happens quite often following a weight training session, and the twitching may even occur in between sets.
Weightlifting can cause any muscle to twitch.
Whatever muscles can get exercised are capable of twitching following the workout.
“If the same area is the only site twitching, and that seems to occur during or after bench pressing weights (or whatever exercise you performed, such as squats, deadlifts, bent-over dumbbell rows or biceps curls), then it is likely the bench press movement is causing the twitching,” explains Michael Cartwright, MD, a board certified neurologist at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston Salem, NC.
Muscle twitching is also called fasciculations. Dr. Cartwright adds, “Fasciculations are generated from an unstable motor neuron firing sporadically.
“When a muscle is exercised, the motor neuron connection can become a little more unstable and fascics can occur.”
This instability is benign, though it can be annoying. Think of the fascics as your muscles’ way of massaging themselves after an intense weightlifting session.
Dr. Cartwright treats numerous conditions including ALS, brachial plexus injuries, hereditary neuropathies, peripheral neuropathy, peripheral nerve injury and polymyositis.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
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