Ice, Ice, Baby!

[CYO Butch]

Like the others have said, lots of water. Sports drinks (not fruit juice) is also pretty useful, particularly 1 hour before the game 1/2 hour after the game. You want to keep your blood volume up since the muscle aches are from chemicals produced by the muscles not being taken away as quickly as they are generated. The salts (they call them "electrolytes" on the bottles) in the sports drinks also help with keeping the blood volume up. Starting about an hour after the exercise, I believe that drinking another 8-12 ounces of water per 100lbs of body weight is also a good idea. There are two things you then want to accomplish. Get fully hydrated and flush the bad stuff from your muscles. What has really worked for me is to go through my regular warmup exercises. Nothing strenuous, just get the blood flowing again. This seems to help get the chemical buildup out of the muscles. I then try to drink some more water.

It also occurs to me that one of the reasons that asprin does seem to help is that it has three properties. First it's a pain reliever - Great! Second, it's an anit-inflamatory. Third, it's a blood thinner. I think all those things are probably good for fighting stiffness.