I’ve mentioned the FITT principle before,
- Frequency
- Intensity
- Type
- Time
This comes into avoiding DOMS in quite a significant way, and I can’t quite believe I missed it off the first post – it deserves its own little addendum as it’s fairly important.
If you look at your training schedule – those 4 things are fairly key in working it out. If you go ahead and change any one of those 4 things significantly in any given workout, (small increments are fine, I’m talking about quantum shifts), or if you change to a higher level on more than one of those things in one work out – for instance raising the intensity and the time spent exercising, or just massively increasing the frequency – you have a rather delightful recipe for getting DOMS.
So, in conclusion, do a little analysis on your workouts using Frequency, Intensity, Time and Type and as you crank it up, don’t do it too much, and don’t mix it all up at the same time – if you do, prepare to spend more time doing recovery.
As an example, I’m off to do Kinder Trog this weekend – 16 miles of off-road loveliness, I haven’t done any training or races that long in a very long time. Yes I’m going to do it, yes, its going to hurt, and yes, I’m going to be buying some ice on the way home.
I’ll talk about the FITT principle in a lot more detail in a later post.