Today is Monday, April 21 and once again I’m surprised to have some delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) in my quadriceps and hamstring muscles; I guess this time running sprints on Saturday morning was the cause; interestingly I have been running 20 second sprints for over a year, but I changed the way I do them in the last month; from February 2007 through February 2008, I ran 8 sprints with a 100 second rest between sprints; in March 2008 I started running 20 second sprints with only 10 seconds rest in between (which naturally causes the speed of the sprints to be less). So I was surprised that going back to the old style of running would cause DOMS; but now I know that running sprints with fresh legs uses muscles differently than running sprints with tired legs.
Because I have been having some trouble with DOMS and fatigued muscles in the last couple months, I am delaying all anaerobic exercise until DOMS is gone; this includes not only my 3 per week “long” 20-30 minute exercise sessions but also my occasional 2-4 minute anaerobic sessions. After the DOMS is gone this time, I expect to only do my 3 “long” sessions per week and eliminate any 2-4 minute sessions.
I’m going to try to follow Rob Faigin’s compound admonition in “Natural Hormonal Enhancement” which is:
- never decide to do anaerobic exercise earlier than your plan because you feel like exercising
- never do anaerobic exercise if you have pain or weakness.
Oh well, even when not exercising I can still do these things which may stimulate or help the release of growth hormone:
- Use whey protein to act as a secretagogue when I get up in the morning.
- I can take an afternoon nap to stimulate growth hormone.
- I can continue to play around with my new “game” of taking cold showers. A cold shower seems to reduce DOMS temporarily and it may speed the healing process by reducing swelling and increasing antioxidants created by the body.
