I healed my cramping trapezius with some combination of time and trigger point therapy. I highly recommend reading about trigger point therapy if you have muscle pain or cramping, because my limited experience with it has been extremely positive.
I had my first workout on Monday, 11/7/11, three days ago. I went with a friend who has been doing the Geek to Freak program for several weeks now, and he showed me through a G2F workout. After trying the different workout, I decided to discard Occam's Protocol and go all-out with Geek to Freak.
The idea behind G2F is also simple: work as many muscle groups as possible to failure within a limited period of time, and your body will respond with a massive hormonal shift that favors muscle gain and fast metabolism. Work every muscle to failure in one set with 5/5 cadence, then go home, eat a ton and only go back for another workout after the soreness is gone.
Here's a list of the exercises I did, which will change slightly (*) due to some minor shoulder joint issues I have:
- Leg Curl
- Calve Raise
- Reverse Curl (palms facing down)
- Chest Fly*
- Assisted Dips
- Leg Press
- Barbell Pullover
- The "Yates" Bent Row
- Bosu Ball Crunch
Leg exercises are great for shifting hormone balance because they're huge and command a lot of body resources, and are also probably the most useful muscles in everyday life (duh).
I'll be replacing the chest fly with the chest press machine. I honestly prefer the fly for the range of motion it covers, but unfortunately my left shoulder can't take much lateral torque. I'm not sure why because I don't recall ever injuring it, but it needs to be worked around anyway.
The "Yates" bent row is a great multi-joint exercise, but form is especially important with this one. I'll spend a few minutes rowing just the bar next time to get my form right before putting any real weight on.
Bosu ball crunches are awesome and I'll recommend them to anybody who just does normal crunches. I was only able to do about 12 of them, after which my abs felt way more used than they do after a set of normal crunches.
I've got an appointment with a physician in a few hours, where I'll explain what I'm doing in the hope of getting approved for some Student Health Insurance-paid blood tests for enzymes, hormones, etc. I've also received a tip that NO-Xplode can cause temporary liver problems in some people, so I'll be looking at liver enzymes as well. I'll try to get as many tests done as they'll let me have, partly because I'm concerned about my liver and partly because data turns me on.
In the next post I'll tabulate my vitals over the past few days, and try to set up some metrics other than sheer weight.
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