Ease muscles into spring activities

Now that the weather is warmer, it feels great to mow the lawn, clean out the closets, re-stain the deck and heft 10 bags of potting soil and a couple more of mulch as if it were as light as a sack of Splenda.

But you got carried away by the sun, the clear air blowing through the windows, the daffodils wafting gently in the breeze. You overdid it, and now you have aches where you never knew you had muscles.

When you’ve tackled the yard needs or spring household cleaning and then can barely move the next day, you have what Sheila Kalas, an exercise physiologist, calls “delayed-onset muscle soreness” – in which you don’t feel the strain until 24 to 48 hours after the activity.

“While you’re out there, you think, ‘this is great!’ ” Kalas says.

Afterward, your body sends you what Kalas calls “a sometimes-painful lesson in starting slow.”

It happens even to those who exercise frequently, when they use muscles they don’t normally use in ways for which the muscles aren’t trained.

For example, when Kalas recently played golf, she had some muscle soreness even though she runs and lifts weights.

“Don’t continue the activity, thinking, ‘my body will tell me to stop,’ ” Kalas says. “Your brain tells you when to stop.”

If you’ve already overdone it, there’s a solution: light exercise to help dissipate the soreness. That doesn’t mean lifting 20 more bags of mulch, but something gentle, such as taking a walk and taking out the garbage.