Ok first of all let me give background to my question. I was in the middle of a maximal strength program (4 sets of 4, high intensity), but after my leg workouts for some reason I would be sore for 3-4 days afterwords. This was a problem for 3 reasons. 1.) I play intramural basketball games once a week and being sore for half of the week was taking away a lot of time from working on my shot and doing basketball drills to prepare. 2.) I was unable to completely recover by the time game day rolled around and didnt have the type of explosiveness that I would hope for. 3.) I experienced slight knee pain within the joint, since I have had pretty bad knee tendonitis in the past I knew to take this pain seriously
First of all, I couldnt really understand why my legs all of a sudden were acting as if theyve never been trained before. I wasnt coming off of a long layoff or anything. Anyway I decided to scrap the maximal strenght training that I was doing and start the entire periodization over again by doing anatomical adaptation training instead. Basically I would do like 12-15 reps of squats, leg extensions, and leg curls to let my leg muscles, tendons, and connective tissues get used to training. I figured that this workout would be pretty easy and give me plenty of days to work on basketball stuff during the week instead of havind to rest so much.
So I did this workout 2 days ago and compared the the maximal strenght training I was doing obviously it was a breeze. However today Im actually sore, which was unexpected. I avoided doing any type of active recovery or stretching since it seems that everytime I try to do active recovery I end up doing too much and hurting the cause. Im hoping this is just because this was my first workout with sets and reps that were very different from what I was doing before. Im hoping that my next workout will not cause this type of soreness, but Im even considering making my leg workout even lower intensity and giving my body time to adapt. However, I think that that shouldnt really be necessary considering how easy this workout is. I mean this workout should be easy even for a beginner and Ive been training for years. As you can tell, Im very confused and frustrated…
So anyway I guess my main question is if Im attacking this problem the right way? My main goal is to be able to use my legs at least a little bit everyday. Like doing high intensity basketball drills one day, then light drills, then weights, then light shooting, etc. But the way that my leg workouts are affecting me, its like Im too sore to even shoot for a few days. I would rather aclimate my legs to the workout slowly and avoid DOMS altogether.
Other information that is probably important - I warmup properly before all my workouts. I cool down and stretch afterwards. I also use contrast showers and ice baths to recover, but honestly dont know besides the fact that my legs are usually numb for at least a half hour after. My upper body weight days are going fine, which is why I didnt really mention them.
Thanks in advance to anyone who responds.