Should I exercise if I feel sore?
Yes. You probably should.
It’s starting to be shown in research that what many have known from experience for a long time is true. Exercising on top of a muscle ache will generally reduce the severity of the ache more quickly than resting. Getting your body moving and making things flow is helpful.
This said, there are different types of soreness.
If you’re sore due to an injury, then you should probably back off the injured area until the initial inflammation has gone down and you have a plan for fixing things. Likewise, if you’re sore due to a ‘little niggle’ that won’t go away, you should adapt your exercise plans to avoid antagonising things, and hopefully in order to address the cause of the niggle too.
In either of these scenarios, you can still exercise the rest of your body, knowing that you might need to adapt things and that you’ll probably not be on top form.
Likewise, if you’re ‘just sore’, as you might be from over-doing things, then you probably shouldn’t try to hit a new record that day. Your focus for that workout should be on promoting recovery rather than bettering your strength or performance.
So, to conclude, if you are training responsibly with a well written program that you are happy / able to adapt if necessary, then you probably don’t need to skip many workouts due to soreness.