Well this exertion headache issue has disrupted my training a bit obviously. I decided to take most of last week pretty easy. I got an hour-long deep tissue massage and it was like torture. The therapist was good, had done a lot of years at AFL footy clubs. He said my traps and lower back were basically like concrete, had so much tension built up in them from training the last few years. He really worked out the trigger points and also did some dry needling in my glutes. He also said the annoying pain in my glute/ham was probably just tight lower back/glute medius muscles pulling on it. When he pushed hard on my left glute medius I could feel it radiating down my leg where the pain was so he's probably right. It was absolute hell though, getting all the sore spots worked on, but felt good afterwards, especially glute/ham pain.
Anyway I felt pretty good, so once I'd recovered from the beatdown he gave me I decided to try out a light track/gym session. Unfortunately I started to feel the headache come on after a few sets of pogos so I'm not ready yet. It went away very quickly but it seems at the moment any strong exertion effort will bring it on again so I need to rest more. I've read a lot of different BB forums and it seems like a very common thing: it's usually a squat/bench press movement that does it. These threads in particular have some good discussion:
http://board.crossfit.com/showthread.php?t=58659http://community.myprotein.com/bodybuilding/34668-exertion-headache-squatting.htmlGiven I know I'm all-clear in terms of nasty brain stuff (thanks to a $350 CT scan that lasted 30secs), I'm pretty sure it's a combo of tight neck muscles and increased blood pressure from all the maximal squatting I've done over last 2-3 months that eventually leads to slight blood vessel damage in the neck/occipital muscles, which causes a headache. I've just got to take time off and let it heal like any other injury. Maybe 2-3 weeks, which sucks, but I just can't do anything at the moment, it's really annoying. Once I'm past it though it shouldn't be a problem, gonna make sure to keep a check on not just the tight muscle groups in my legs but also all over, and also proper breathing and not going near failure every time I squat. I might also finally incorporate some front squatting to give my shoulder/neck muscles a break from the bar. Frustrating to have to rest as I'm in a really interesting phase of my training (low BW, good relative strength, high jumps atm without much explosive plyos yet). But I don't want to have to take paracetamol before every gym session either so...
