Life is pain, princess.

Well, it's been a rough few weeks.

I didn't have a lot of energy after returning from Florence, and then there was the Olympics, and then I got some kind of gut bug and was in pain for ages.

Another irritating mishap was having a molar disintegrate on me. Turns out I'm going to need a crown. Meh.

Due to a coincidence of timing, I also was exercising my reproductive freedom and got a copper intrauterine device (IUD) inserted on Monday.  If you're squeamish about girl cooties, don't follow the jump (men being disturbed by such things is more than a little silly, but hey, that's a rant for another day. Women being disturbed by such things is only excusable on the same level as a guy wincing when another guy gets kicked in the crotch).

DOMS (not the fun kind)

This was going to be an achievements post, but then I got into rant mode. It happens. Twice in two days, actually. Enjoy.

Woke up tired and sore today. Annoying, but oh well.

I'm researching branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) to help mitigate the delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) I get from working out. For some reason, I have both prolonged and intense DOMS. Most people, as it happens, get this for about 12 to 36 hours post workout, that is, starting 12 hours after a workout and going until 36 hours after the workout. So basically just the next day. For me, it seems I get it for around 12 to 60 hours post workout. This, amongst other things, makes for a really awkward work/rest cycle.

To put it more concretely, say I work out on Monday evening. Normal recovery would then allow me to work out on Wednesday morning. Personally, I'm still sore, and I certainly will still be sore this evening. I'll be okay probably tomorrow morning (Thursday). This leads to a cycle of something like this: Mon (eve), Thurs (morn), Sat (eve), Tues (morn), Thurs (eve), Sun (morn), Tues (eve), Fri (morn), Mon (eve) ...

Frankly, that's not going to work for me. There is the other option, of course, of doing only 2 workouts a week - but with a fixed group session on Friday evenings, that means I get only one chance a week to work on my fitness goals. I mean, exercise is exercise, and that's good, but I have goals.

There have been a few studies done on the effect of BCAAs on DOMS. It seems to be effective in some degree in reducing both the duration and the intensity of DOMS. As I understand it, the BCAAs act to reduce muscle damage during a workout, and also promote muscle repair post workout. It does mean swallowing a bunch of pills before and after, but well, I can deal with that.

Intensity of pain wise, my DOMS is also fairly severe. Usually, DOMS is related to the amount of effort you put in - it's basically caused by muscle damage and repair. Generally, your muscles will inform you during the workout how much damage they're undergoing, and from there it's generally easy to work out how sore you're going to feel afterwards. For some reason, I don't really get those signals. I can do a workout where I go nowhere near my maximum effort, feel nothing but nicely warm and loosened up afterwards, and the next day I'll be stiff and sore. If I actually go all out, the next day I'm lucky to be able to shuffle around, and sitting down and standing up become exercises in pain tolerance. And I'll be like that for the next four days. I wrote about this a while back here.

For mitigating my pain and recovery, the current things I'm doing are protein before and after; electrolyte solution during and after; no caffeine the same day or following day; calcium supplementation after; and low rep sets with heavy weights. Each of these things have helped a bit, dropping caffeine the most.

BCAAs are the only thing that aren't yet part of my regime, so here's hoping they help too.

Working out at full intensity is good for you, my ass.

I did a session with a Personal Trainer on Tuesday. This, while in theory a good idea - get fit, get strong, etc, yay - has turned out to be less than entirely positive. As my workmates can attest, I've since spent most of the subsequent days being unable to walk or function normally due to severe muscle pain. This morning, Saturday, 4 days later, most of the muscle pain is gone, but enough of it has remained to trigger a spasm in my neck and shoulder. I pushed myself during the session, a bit, but I'm pretty sure I could have gone a little harder on certain exercises.

Ow.

I know all the fitness whatevers everywhere say that for maximum benefit, you should train as hard as you possibly can without making yourself ill at the gym. They also say that you should do it about 3 times a week. Those two aims seems to be ... incompatible, at least with respect to my body and its quirks. I think I'd rather take longer, train with less intensity and train more often than put myself out of commission entirely once a week.

Is there anyone out there that can tell me why I have such a protracted recovery time - even when I'm not pushing myself as hard as I can go? Is it just that I'm that numb to my own body's signals during training? Is there something dietary I can do to make myself recover faster? I already eat a lot of protein as part of my daily diet. Is it just that when I push myself, I don't hold anything back, normally? For me, full intensity is just short of injury. Is it something different for other people? Also, what the hell is wrong with me?

I suppose I need to learn restraint. Not one of my stellar qualities in general, really. I tend to go full out at whatever I do.