Pain Thresholds

[Tim Kelley]

@dasgeh 49013 wrote:

If you, like me, find it hard to fit getting to a yoga studio at the appointed time into your day, I like the yoga and pilates workouts you can find on youtube. Plus, they are free.

I found these folks by searching youtube for “yoga for cyclists”. The whole workout is good, though I don’t understand the star trek look.

When I have the time and money, I LOVE doing a regular Bikram Yoga practice. Yes, it’s hot and humid, but afterwards all weather feels fine (I felt warmed from the inside, so didn’t mind cold, but the hot/muggy was never as hot/muggy as the room, so didn’t seem so bad). I haven’t tried them, but there’s a bikram place in Ballston, and one in Dupont. There are probably more…

+1 for Bikram. I incorporated into my training last year as a way to acclimatize to the heat and prepare for biking 112 miles and then running a marathon in 95 degree temps in August in New York City. I’m happy with my experiences at SuperNova Yoga in Ballston.

[creadinger]

@krazygl00 49011 wrote:

I really need to do this myself. Besides not getting in enough miles over the winter, I’ve also been a lot less flexible lately, and weak in the upper body. I think yoga (or maybe even a martial art like Aikido) may be the answer for me, with a possible combination of some weight training. Ideally I’d like to find a yoga style that combines both of these if possible. Would you recommend Ashtanga for this? Also, which studio do you attend?

I honestly haven’t done any other styles of yoga, but I’ve heard about hot yoga, but that just seems like a gimmick to me. Ashtanga is pretty fast moving where you only stay in one pose for 5 breaths or so and then move on to the next. The routine is always the same, so it’s easy to practice on your own too – “mysore practice”. Once a pose becomes easy for you, there are 1 million ways to make it harder, which a good teacher will be able to show you. It’s pretty easy to lose your breath at times but over time you build up control over it with better endurance. The only real rest you get is in down dog. I guess in a nutshell I think it blends the building of personal strength, endurance and flexibility pretty equally with the ultimate goal of becoming thin and flexible. You’ll never develop the strength you would get at like CrossFit or whatever though.

We’ve been working with a teacher named Keith Moore for like 8 years now. He’s a mostly retired ultra-marathoner so he knows the problems that other sport athletes can have – flexibility etc… we know him mostly as a yoga teacher. He has his own place – Ashtanga Yoga Studio, located in the Palisades area of DC on MacArthur Blvd. http://aysdc.com/. If that’s not convenient for you, he’d be the first to mention that there are other ashtanga studios in the area like Little River Yoga (Arlington), Woodley Park, as well as a few other interdisciplinary ones.

To get started all you have to do is sign up for a beginner’s class and show up. I recommend bringing a hand towel for sweat too. I really enjoy doing it, even though it is painful at times and extremely sweaty.

[PotomacCyclist]

In addition to rest/easy days, easy weeks, recovery calories and water after longer/tougher rides, quality nutrition throughout the day and week, enough sleep and so on, do you ever take an off-season where you switch things up completely? After my final goal races or events of the year (usually in the fall), I will take some time off. If I’m really feeling run down, I might take a week or two (or more) and do almost no real activity other than casual walking. Then when I get back into it in early to mid winter, I keep the aerobic activity lower while focusing a bit more on strength training.

Same thing in mid-summer. If I’ve been doing a lot of training and riding that spring and summer, I will usually take a very easy week, right after my first big goal race of the year (if applicable).

***.
Another thought — could it be allergies? Tree pollen levels are starting to shoot up again. Usually I get allergy symptoms in the spring. But this year, I think I got a cold, or fever. It was different because I had mild tension headaches, deep muscular aches and chills all over, a slight fever and a sore throat. That’s not typical allergy symptoms for me. All this happened last week and into this weekend. First time I’ve had a cold in about 5 years. I managed to run a 5K race last Friday. But over the weekend, the cold really caught up to me, to the point where I could barely get up. For the first time in a very long time, I spent an entire day literally doing almost nothing (other than surfing the Web). I barely moved around at all and didn’t even step out the door. While that only lasted a couple days, my sluggishness lasted a while longer. I still haven’t ridden or run at all this week, even though the sore throat and chills have disappeared.

The cold/fever is gone, but I can tell that the pollen levels are high. The antihistamines I took should be enough to keep me congestion free for the rest of the spring. But all my nerves are tingling, like my body is trying to fight off the pollen but can’t quite do its thing. No itchy eyes, but I’m having problems sleeping and I still feel kinda spacey this week. A combination of recovery from the cold/fever, the lingering effects of the cold medicine and then some allergy medicine, and the high pollen counts.

If you saw Davey Johnson’s post-game interview after yesterday’s Nationals game, he looked miserable. He said he was getting pounded by the D.C. pollen too. That might be happening to you.

[Dirt]

I don’t really take time off, but I do relax a lot in December. I ride different bikes in different ways and make fun a higher priority. That said, I find long bike rides that hurt a lot to be fun activity. I guess that makes this a useless post.

[PotomacCyclist]

I think the year-end break is a little more important with regards to running, especially long-distance runners. But it can help with cycling too. There are plenty of fit 20-somethings that get burned out and mentally fatigued from doing too much for too long. It’s always something to watch for, with most people.

[KelOnWheels]

@PotomacCyclist 49087 wrote:

I think the year-end break is a little more important with regards to running, especially long-distance runners.

My year-end break’s been going on for four months – I’m gonna be SO FAST when I start running again!

[ntrots]

@eminva 48998 wrote:

Make sure you distinguish between fatigue and injury — if the pain is from an injury, it’s not going to get better with more of the activity.

Sometimes I find pain to be an indicator of “too much, too soon” — if I was inactive for a period of time due to illness or any other reason, I usually have to ramp back up much more slowly than I would like.

Liz

Agree with Liz and the others. I add cross training during the return. It works for me.

[Author]

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