Injury Prevention, Recovery, Healing, and Performance Enhancement: March 2006 Archives

This week I backed off cycling training. No matter what I did, I was very low energy and just could not summon enough juice to work out at wattages and intensities in previous weeks.

What a frustrating thing. I am now building to my next race in June and feel that backing off now interrupts my progress. But I am trying to rationalize better and listen to my body.

A intuitive training regimen is prescribed by my coach. There will be lulls in my energy naturally and forcing my way through them without rest is only going to increase frustration and potential injury.

Some training programs have them built in every 4 weeks. Those coaches reduce volume by up to 50% on lower intensity weeks. My coach prefers to program them in based on how the body feels, as they do not occur as regularly as training programs schedule volume breaks.

They can also be sport specific. My swimming and running apparently have not been affected, while my cycling has clearly had a down-energy turn. Time to do a series of easy bikes for this week and then see how I do next week.

Electrostim is great. You crank it up as far as you can stand and it makes your muscles jump around like crazy. It stimulates your muscles into healing, helps blood flow, and is sometimes used to exercise the muscles.

Well...sometimes.

Yesterday I have two electrostim pads hooked up to each hamstring. I crank it up to as much as I can stand but something goes wrong. It causes my hamstrings to really lock up and they hurt!

I ask for the electrostim to be backed off but it's too late. Microtears occur in my hamstrings and it wrecks today's workout. Both hamstrings feel overworked and like they're gonna cramp at any moment.

Another lesson learned. Too much of a good thing sometimes ain't.

Today I heard the most funny term - grasterbating.

It's basically doing what your sports medicine doctor does to you, but in the privacy of your own home. In this case, it is the Graston Technique, which uses these scary looking metal tools to scrape away adhesions that form in your muscles. It feels like someone is taking a knife and trying to take thin slices out of your flesh. So if you have no adhesions, it actually doesn't hurt all that much. But if you do, it hurts like hell!

After doing this for a while, I find that when I run my fingers over my muscles, I'll find these small bumps and it disgusts me. All I want to do is get rid of them because if they build up, they can cause injury during training or racing.

But I can't see my Graston doctor every week, or at least at the frequency at which these adhesions form. I want them gone NOW.

So tomorrow, I go to Williams and Sonoma and Pottery Barn in search of various kitchen utensils which I can use to apply Graston to myself...and grasterbate in the privacy of my home.