Many times after we work out, all we want to do is just take a shower, eat, and maybe take a nap.
Nowadays, I have to pay attention to what I do afterwards because if I don’t, I’ll pay for it with lesser performance during workouts in the following days.
This was brought to the forefront 2 weeks ago when, on Friday, I ran some hard hill repeats and then the day after I went to climb Old La Honda on my bike. Both were very difficult and taxing, and the day after my bike ride I was tight but feeling not so bad. But 2 days after, my quads and hams really got tight and felt really non-recovered after 2 days. Working out was tough as the warmup loosened them up somewhat, but not as much as I liked. Each workout was harder for me to put max effort into, and I didn’t feel optimal although I did get through my workouts. It wasn’t until I hit my weekly ART and Graston treatments that the muscle knots were finally released and they felt back to normal.
I thought about this and thought about my usual post-workout ritual, which I had not been doing. After I get home from a hard workout, this consists of:
1. Down a glass of Endurox recovery drink.
2. Jump in the shower.
3. Stretch everything.
4. Foam roller.
5. Ice (optional).
6. Go eat a big meal.
The last few workouts, and especially my last hard one, I did not foam roller. This last weekend, I did one more hill repeat on the run and was planning to see if I could do Old La Honda twice (but only did 1.5 before I ran out of juice). I knew it would be hard on the bod and resolved to go through my complete ritual, even if I didn’t feel like it.
It worked like a charm.
The missing element this time was foam rolling my legs post-workout. I rolled them (it was definitely painful at points) but mostly it was good to massage the muscle and help clear out all those annoying by-products like lactic acid which will tighten up muscles the next day or the day after.
Now that it’s a day after, my legs feel amazingly good even after completing a harder workout than the previous week. It just reinforced the fact that I shouldn’t skip any steps in my post-workout ritual, or else it will result in reduced or more difficult performance in subsequent workouts in the next week. This is not a good thing for triathletes, who have to stuff 3 sports into one week and recovery is important to be able to get to the next day’s workout, which is sometimes two sports, or even all three.

In my quest for finding new running shoes, I noticed I was getting more blisters than normal. After about 30 min of running, especially on the treadmill, I could feel some serious rubbing on my soles, which would ultimately lead to swelling of my feet and then severe blistering.
I tried everything. Lube on my feet. Nope. Wider shoes. Nope. Tying looser or tighter. Nope.
Then I thought that maybe my socks had something to do with it. I ran down to Sports Basement and bought some Wright socks advertised as “frictionless”.
And that was it. Apparently, my other socks were old enough such that fabric was wearing down and getting abrasive and especially when they got wet from my sweaty feet, the friction would really do a number on my soles.
With the new socks, the fabric hadn’t broken down yet. Plus, these had some funky design so that they would help prevent blisters.
Amazing that just keeping socks new would help me here. You learn something new everyday…

About two months back, I started getting sore in my wrists and forearms when I practiced piano. It was at a time when I was perfecting my stroke and really working hard at strength, having increased my paddle usage and seeing good results.
I did not want tendonitis to develop, nor to watch it go towards carpal tunnel syndrome. Seeing many people with wrist braces made me want to get this treated immediately!
I went to my physical therapist and asked her if Graston could help with my problem. I thought that generally, tendonitis comes from overuse and tight muscles which don’t get released, as well as putting the joints and muscles in awkward alignment when performing an action. So correcting my form while playing piano was not too hard. I just sat further away from the piano and my wrists are straighter. But performing a good catch while swimming and then pulling back in a shallow way does put more stress on the forearms. Couple that with piano playing and you get sore forearms!
It turned out Graston was great for this. As I get Graston applied to any muscle on my body, I find that the rough handling of the muscle, while painful during treatment, seems to relax and release tension when the treatment is done. It’s uncanny and my physical therapist says that they are still studying why this happens. Maybe the muscle gets abused so much that it just says “Enough! Uncle!” and just relaxes. Ha. I am sure there is a more scientific, neuromuscular explanation.
So she takes her metal tools and scrapes up my forearms. It hurt like crazy in the beginning! But man did it work well. It kept my muscles loose after workouts and piano practice and the soreness was under control.
In the off season now, I just got Graston on my forearms and they didn’t hurt at all. The lack of swimming these last few weeks has taken so much stress off them that piano playing by itself didn’t tighten up the muscles enough to cause soreness.
I can see where Graston applied to the forearms can definitely help the athlete, the musician, and ultimately us computer techno-generation of mousers and typists from getting sore wrists.

This week I was having calf problems. They come and go now, but for a while it was a huge challenge as my calves adapted to the Pose Method of running, or running more on the balls of your feet. Although they say it takes 2-3 months to adapt, it took me a good year to be running without consistent calf soreness. Thank god for ART to realign built up scar tissue and make my damaged calf muscles functional again!
But this last week it was one of those times when my calves acted up, as they will on occasion over time. I went in to see my Graston Technique sports medicine doctor. After some painful but incredibly helpful scraping of the calves with Graston tools, the knots were cleared out.
Then, she took this weird tape out and proceeded to cut it into a 3 strips, but attached at the bottom. Sort of like a pitchfork. She takes this tape configuration and tapes it to my right calf, which is the most problematic. Very funky.
This tape sticks to skin like nothing I’ve seen. You can swim with it and it won’t come off. It causes some sensation in the muscle to the body that it’s being supported, and the tape does help keep the muscle supported and not swinging around to cause or at least minimize damage.
She tapes me up knowing that I am an athlete, and athletes seldom just sit around with injury. I tell her that the next day I need to do my long run so she knows that I’m going no matter what, so might as well try something to help.
I go out for a 14 mile, 2:18 run. My calf starts hurting midway, but hell I have to finish my run so I keep going. It’s pretty sore all the way to the end. But then, when I get home, I do notice one difference. The pain has stopped! It was only sore while running and when I got home and subsequently walking around, I find that there almost no pain at all! Somehow this tape did really support my calf, even though it was sore through the run. I am sure it would have hurt more and been hurting for a long time after if I had not. I probably would have injured it again. I suspect the pain was more protesting while it was in the healing process. After all, she treated me and then I immediately went running on it without giving it enough time to truly heal!
This tape is called Kinesio Tape. It’s expensive but I highly recommend it. You can get it at: Kinesio-Tape.com. They even sell books on how to tape up your muscles. Cool!

After a few weekends of long rides, I am finding that it takes 2 days to recover. I am growing older and my body is changing, and needing more time to recover after long, hard efforts. So I am on a quest to figure out how to recover faster.
I now foam roll before and after working out, and stretch. I also use ART to help realign scar tissue to make it functional. And I have started using ice baths.
Recommended to me by my coach and my ART physical therapist, the flushing effects of the icing and the ensuing blood flow after warming back up helps remove lactic acid and shortens time for recovery. Previously, I only did this after Ironman New Zealand and after every NYC Marathon. It sure makes me feel better after a long race.
I once tried to fill up my bathtub with frigid, ice filled water and step into it. HA! Impossible! No way could I step into that!
I have to sit in an empty bathtub first. Then I fill the tub with cold water and let it fill above the level of my thighs. Then and only then do I load the water with ice. I use two big bags. I dump one in until it almost melts away. Then I load in the other bag. This keeps a frigid water bath going for about 10 minutes, which is about as long as I can stand it!
Then I go take a warm shower, which helps the flushing effect after the icing effect. I hope that it will reduce my recovery time. I’ll find out tomorrow on Monday.

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.