The NMR detection of methyl groups is of keen interest because they provide the long-range distance information required to establish global folds of high molecular weight proteins. Using longitudinal $^1H$ relaxation optimization, we achieve a gain in sensitivity of approximately 1.6-fold in the methyl-TROSY and its NOESY experiments for the 38 kDa protein mitogen activated protein kinase p38 in its fully protonated and $^{13}C$ and $^{15}N$ labeled state.