[voisin]

Some might argue that if you don’t feel sore at all you haven’t pushed yourself enough, and if you feel so sore it takes days and days to recover then you pushed yourself too hard. Finding the sweet spot is important. And I think this applies to strength as well as running and other exercise.

[SketchySeaBeast]

In my experience it's an indicator if I'm doing something enough or not. If I regularly perform an exercise it won't cause soreness. Squat 3x a week, one of those sessions being heavy? No soreness. Squat once a week? Definitely getting DOMS afterwards. Same with running. If get sore after a run I probably took time off before it.

[voisin]

I’ve been doing StrongLifts consistently since Jan 1 and so 3x per week I am doing squats. I still feel soreness despite 3x per week because the weights are semi-consistently increasing. So I think to modify what you are saying, I think frequency is one vector, but another is volume. Or maybe I am still just a beginner and eventually I’ll be able to lift increasingly heavy weights week over week without any soreness!

[SketchySeaBeast]

Interesting. I was lifting for nearly ten years, did starting strength, texas method, 5/3/1, and I found that the soreness largely went away unless there was a marked change in intensity or program.

[cthalupa]

This has been my experience with a sustained period over years of lifting in my early to mid 20s and several periods of restarting since then. Even when regularly adding weight, after a few months I stopped being particularly sore.

I could still feel that I had worked out the day before, sure, but as long as I was getting enough protein, getting enough sleep, doing warm up sets, etc., the soreness was incredibly minimal. Missing any of those things could cause a pretty significant increase in feeling it the next day, though.