Bench Press: 70KG * 10 * 3

27 days to get that to 70KG * 12 * 3.

Tomorrow I'll take things easy. Something similar to 90KG * 5 * 3 + stretching.

Based on weather forecasts you may have to wait 1-2 weeks.

26/06

Kcal: 2498
Protein: 240g

27/06

Kcal: 2014
Protein: 163g

Dumbbell Bench Press: 28KG * 12 * 2
Squat: 90KG * 5 * 3

I have old man's knees. They hurt during the weekend's hill walk & today's squat. Part of this is age, part of it is weight but it seems bad even taking those things into consideration. Getting down to 80KG will surely help but beyond that what should I do?

28/06

Kcal: Crisps, breads, desserts :/
Protein: Got lots of it.

Sigh. Not sure why I ate so much today.

Knees feeling particularly old. Potential tennis hit tomorrow - cloudy weather predicted & body banged up but I might go to get exercise & work on my strokes.

29/06

Kcal: 2323
Protein: 117g

Bench Press: 70KG * 12, 11

Too many Kcals given yesterday's intake. Steamed ~1KG brocolli/cauliflower, I'm aiming to average 500g+ of steamed veggies per day as I close in on sub 100KG.

Tennis tomorrow v. Golders. We played a few times last month and I averaged a game a set. I hope to do a little better tomorrow but I won't win a set v. him. He's solid, unspectacular, probably a lower end 3.5. No big weapons and his serve is weak but he gets a lot in play and is good at hitting aggressive well placed winners if I present the opportunity. I still feel beat up especially my knees but some stretching, a good night's sleep & some will power will get me through 90 minutes tennis.

Diablo - I recorded the last few times I played Golders so I think I'll give tomorrow a break.

Tennis v. Golders

2-6 2-6 0-5

- Lost the eight games. Played third "set" because we had twenty minutes & I wanted to burn some Kcal.

- I was very happy with how I played the first set and a half. We had lots of good rallies, I kept my double faults down & my backhand drive actually was semi competent! I think I was a little unlucky to lose the first set 2-6, I broke him to love in the first game & got to a bunch of deuces. I did have a few netcords in the match though.

- Obviously I still only won 4 of the first 13 games. Normally I am an equal opportunities offender between hitting the ball in the net and going long but today was net day. I lost so many points putting a standard forehand into the net while under no pressure. The net was high, but it was high for both of us. A couple of times I've consistently hi the ball long, usually because I was playing with an Eastern rather than semi-Western forehand grip - can't think of a technical reason why I hit so much into the net (I doubt I was using a full Western grip but maybe?) - and don't have a recording.

- Again, big issue is my fitness. We played quite a few lengthy rallies but Golders is about 10 years older than me, carries a little extra weight and is just coming off 30 days of Ramadan when I presume he did little/no exercise. And he was noticeably less tired than me. My tiredness was partially due to aches and pains which I can alleviate with stretching & weight loss. Also due to fitness. For my next three month challenge I will focus on weight loss and fitness & put lifting aside. I'll aim to maintain my strength while dramatically improving my cardio. My bench press numbers would actually be pretty good if I weighed 80KG, maintaining 70KG * 12 * 3 is fine. I'd like to improve my core strength & will continue to squat but I will prioritise improving my cardio.

Tennis v. Professor

1-6 4-6

Played well (for me). Many good sustained rallies.

Since the points went a little longer I moved in to the next much more often than usual. I could do with working on my volleying...

Broke two strings with one shot - is that usual? Previous times I think I've only broken on string.



Won the point despite playing three shots with broken strings (and the initial shot)!!

My main stick is a 300g 100 sq in Babolat Pure Drive. Backup is a Dunlop Revelation Tour Pro II 95 sq in - can't find a weight but the handle is longer & heavier than the Babolat & I'd guess the racket weights 325-350g unstrung - new versions of the same racket weigh 200g. I kind of like playing with the smaller head size but the handle is too heavy.

Started to fatigue at 4-4, about an hour into the match. Yesterday I did 90KG * 5 * 2 squat and 70KG * 12 * 2,1 (there was a break) bench press. Legs are still tight.

I am hanging in there, loose diet the past couple of days & body is still remarkably tight (really odd after this long), I've got bench press in, stretching more so I can hopefully squat this weekend.

Yesterday

Squat: 80KG * 6 * 3
Bench Press: 70KG * 10, 9, 11

Today

Tennis v. Professor

2-6 0-6 7-10

Legs are still really tight from the hill walking/hiking two weeks ago. I should have done more stretching - I thought they would loosen up over time.

Tennis today - my groundstrokes were actually semi decent. But I threw in way too many double faults and my movement was poor. I cope poorly with heat, even though it was only 21°c - seems like something I should be able to work on but I'm not sure how. I really do think I'll put up a quite competitive score if I improve my serve (playing more than once a week will help) and play when it's a little cooler & I'm fresh (squatting yesterday didn't help but it was the right thing to do).

I also need to beat Terrible Tim for the purposes of my three month challenge. My current thought process is to lift tomorrow, rest on Wednesday and play Terrible Tim on Thursday. 20+ minutes of stretching every day. If I hold Terrible Tim to 5-6 games over two sets I'll consider that part of the challenge accomplished. I think I'll do it as long as my legs feel good and I move well. Not looking forward to playing him since the tennis is so poor but it's worth it to tick that box (or not tick that box & realise I need to improve more).

Squat: 85KG * 6 * 3
Bench Press: 70KG * 12 * 3



I still haven't done 100KG * 5 * 3 squat and am not sure if I could do so right now. Just need to stretch and loosen up the relevant muscles and I should do so pretty easily.

Debating whether to attempt a hit with Terrible Tim tomorrow. I want to smoke him and move on to other opponents so playing when I might be sore/tight is risky.

Update: Terrible Tim is out of town for the next two weeks which means I won't be able to play him before the July 23 three month challenge date. But I'm totally comfortable with playing him a few days later & counting it as a win if I beat him convincingly enough.

BTW - looking for suggestions for my next three month challenge. I've already decided on my weight goal + one other secret one but I'm looking for suggestions for cardio and tennis + anything else people care to suggest. I'm going to focus on cardio & content myself with something similar to maintenance for bench press and a small improvement in my squat but would also like to hear from my loyal fans especially if there's any strength areas you think I might have been neglecting with a bench press/squat centric lifting schedule.

13/07

20 min bike @ 16.62 MPH. Decent amount of walking. Not the toughest workout but I wanted to get something in and 20 minutes biking did the job.

Had a nocturnal leg cramp overnight. For those who aren't familiar - you wake up in the middle of the night with an intense pain usually (for me always) in the calf area. The pain lasts for what seems like a long time (In reality ~20 seconds for me). Unstretching the leg (I sleep in the foetal position) is extremely difficult but seems to ameliorate the pain. Doctors are not sure what causes the cramps. In the past I typically get leg cramps a few nights in a row so the next few sleeps should be fun.

Also I have pain in the same shoulder/neck area I've mentioned a couple of times, which is weird since I felt fine yesterday and didn't do any upper body exercises. Perhaps this means the pain is more likely to be a recurrent spasm than muscular damage.

Really need to crank up my fitness since I still have two years to win Wimbledon.

16/07

Squat: 90KG * 6 * 3

Multiple repetitions of painful hamstring stretches. The pain was an indication of just how tight my hamstrings were, they loosened up after a while. Feel a lot better today.

17/07

Tennis v. The Professor

0-6 0-6 1-6

- Man!

- Lost the first 17 games with one, maybe two game points. Then I had a point to make it 2-5 and briefly held dreams of making it 4-6 to end on a moral victory.

- Zero excuses. I felt great. Weather was excellent, slightly too hot but a nice breeze and zero asthma symptoms. Muscles slightly tight but way looser than at any other time over the past three weeks and not an impediment.

- Lots of double faults which explains going 1/9 on service games. But it doesn't explain why I went 0/9 on his serves, and I shouldn't hit double faults on like 1/3 to 2/5 of my service points.

- I don't actually know what I did so wrong and it would be good to have a recording. Felt like I hit an equal amount of balls long as wide as into the net.

- Wasn't particularly fun due to lack of sustained rallies.

- Big positive was my utter lack of tiredness. Undoubtedly this was partially due to the lack of sustained rallies but I'd rarely have any rallies more than a few shots v. Terrible Tim and was still getting tired a couple of months ago.

- I need to play tennis once a week!

- Important to persist with stretching today so I can wake up tomorrow feeling lithe and spry. And then continue with it so I don't go through three week periods with restrictively tight legs.

Squat: 100KG * 5 * 3
Bench Press: 75KG * 8 * 2
Bike: 20 mins @ 16.2 MPH

Squat was difficult, I'm not sure how I went from finding 97.5KG * 5 * 3 relatively easy a few weeks ago to needing to grit my teeth to get out 100KG * 5 * 3 today. Something happened when I went hiking and it feels like my legs/knees aren't fully recovered. They're really tight. Strange.

I'm going to take a week before deciding what my next goals will be. In that time I'll get my diet in order, particularly logging. I'm playing tennis on Tuesday, tomorrow I'll stretch, do some cardio and maybe some upper body lifts.

24/07

Kcal: 2160
Protein: 104g

Good to be back logging again!

Tennis v. Professor

1-6 1-6 1-6

Much better than last time, despite only winning two more games. Had many deuces and game points.

One mistake I'm pretty sure I am regularly making is not keeping my eye on the ball. You'd think this would be easy to fix and if I work on it maybe it will be but I'm in the habit of often averting my gaze to my opponent or where I want to hit the ball. I seem to hit the ball a lot more cleanly when focusing on keeping my eye on the ball, but for whatever reason I tend so slip up and realise shortly after netting a neutral ball that my gaze was not where it was supposed to be.

Part of the reason I slip in to bad habits is lack of fitness - it's harder to force yourself to do something unnatural when you're a little fatigued. And I also noticed that while my footwork was OK today there is still lots of room for improvement - shots where I positioned myself maybe 20cm too close to the ball (laterally) - good enough to get the ball over but a big enough positioning error to make hitting a clean shot much harder (plus I find hitting to the deuce side manageable when too close to the ball but to the ad side way harder so I'm restricted in shot choice). If I was fitter and sharper I'd stand a better chance of making the micro adjustment and hitting the ball in the sweet spot.

I also hit too many double faults as often. My first serve was much improved, not enough to be a weapon yet but most of them were fast enough to stop anyone who wasn't an excellent tennis player doing much. The Professor got most of them back but his returns gave me quite a few opportunities to hit good approach shots and move in - unfortunately my approach shots weren't very good today (as usual) - another area to work on. I might mix in some serve/volleys next time - might not work out well but I never try it and it will either work or be good for the lols!

Meanwhile I want to focus on playing more than once a week. The final game we played today was very high quality - many good extended rallies and a couple of deuces.

01/08

Kcal: 2258
Protein: 231g

Tennis v. Professor

0-6 1-6 4-6

- Need to play more often. Keep doing best in the third set once I get my groove in.
- Backhand slice was my best shot. Consistently keep the ball in play, often quite deep and difficult for the professor to attack. Also makes it easier to slip in a drop shot also I didn't attempt that often.
- Forehand was surprisingly pretty crappy, even in the third set. Normally if I won four games in a set I'd expect to hit consistent forehands but couldn't get anything going.
- Fitness is improving although I needed to take longer than normal breaks every two games in the third set.
- Weather forecast for the next few days is crappy but I think I'll do one to two hours of lessons for the next few weeks. Want to play at least twice a week and a lesson is beneficial for many reasons.

07/08 - 20 minute bike @ ~17.75 MPH. Very comfortable, felt at the time I could have done 30 mins @ 18 MPH.

09/08 - 20 minute bike @ 18.03 MPH. This was very tough, my pulse was 180 and I could not have done half an hour at the same average pace. It was more difficult from the outset, I did the first 10 minutes at a very similar pace to Monday but was hurting more. Not sure why.

Tennis tomorrow v. The Professor. Normally this means I wouldn't exercise the day before but I wanted to make strides in my fitness and this requires pushing myself a little more.

16/08

Tennis v. The Professor

2-6 3-6

17/08

Stationary bike - 25 mins @ 17.1 MPH

Tennis was the best I've played in a month +. My three previous matches I'd won 3-4 games total in eight sets. I believe I held 5/8 service games which is OK, not great, and broke 0/9 times which is bad. Being able to subsequently put in a solid bike ride the next day (could have maintained that pace for a while) was good.

Need to start lifting weights again. My back/ass are visibly less muscular even after a few weeks sans squatting.

31/08

Tennis v. Friday. 3-6 5-6 (5-7). Short notice and I had a match scheduled for the next day hence the decision to go to a tie break early in set two. This was the best sustained tennis I've played in years, serve was much improved (need to place the first serve better otherwise good), groundstrokes were consistent. The match was very enjoyable - lots of good rallies. One criticism you could level is that I pushed the ball - I was content to get the ball in with decent depth and didn't go for many winners/approach shots, but I had better results and a more enjoyable experience. As the match ended I told Friday that playing that way I might have a chance v. The Professor.

01/09

Tennis v. Professor

4-6 0-6

Started up 4-2 with good chances to go 5-2 and lost the next 10 games. I wasn't tired, but I didn't stretch after the previous day's tennis and my thighs/back got very tight. Later in the day I felt very fresh - my cardio is much improved but stretching is key to improving my durability. Also, I broke a string again, quite soon after the previous restringing. I suspect my strings are to blame - while I made an effort to store my racket in a cupboard, the reel of string has at times been left in sunlight and is a couple of years old.

Regardless, much higher quality of play. Not sure why - not like I'd played regularly or taken lessons, hopefully it keeps up (and I improve more) - equally likely I revert to playing like a bag of ****!

In a life update - I have a wedding next June. Rumour is the couple will ask me to officiate the ceremony (which I want them to). Obviously I want to look sexy in the wedding photos, good motivation for the next nine months. Back to logging tomorrow!

Pg,

Where do you get your rackets strung?

Sigh, just posted and lost a big reply.

The last time I had my rackets strung was with a local guy. I drop and pick up the racket at/from a health food store on my local high street. Turnaround is usually next day. I don't know of the guy's bona fides but I've used him since 2015, The Professor uses him (and rarely breaks string despite playing much more tennis than I), the health food store owner is, I think, quite a serious play and uses him etc. I presume he knows what he is doing. Unfortunately he's not in town as often recently, so sometimes I have to go elsewhere.

The time before that was with a guy who lives 2-3 miles away. He is the stringer for a tennis club. I dropped off the rackets and an hour later picked them up. He's not always available.

The other stringer I use is a large sports store. It's not local and turnaround is normally a couple of days which isn't ideal. I actually have a date very nearby on Tuesday which is great, in a perfect world they'd be able to turn around the rackets right away so I could pick them up post-date (the store is open until 10 p.m). But, that's unlikely.

It seems more likely that the strings suck than that two separate stringers both suck. I noticed after the last two stringing that I had to 'recentre' the strings every few points. I don't remember having to do that anywhere near as often before (maybe that was because I had the racket strung at a lower tension?). I find it hard to believe there are a large number of rogue stringers - not much money in it. Plus, I saw a video on how to string a racket and it looked hard to **** up as you had a half decent stringing machine. What do you think?

Pg,

The more frequent breaking is prob the strings, yeah.

The moving around more is from lower tension.

I was asking where you string them because most clubs and stores here, feels like how much they charge to string if you bring strings is about the same as if you buy strings from them. Obv makes sense if you're having freelance stringer dudes stringing your rackets. I didn't even know that was a thing.

Diablo - I find large variance in how much stringers charge to string *and* the differential between how much they charge to string and how much they charge to string + provide strings. The sports store offers cheap stringing but expensive strings. The guy 2-3 miles away offered equally cheap stringing but *much* cheaper strings. His price for strings was so reasonable that I was tempted to go with the fanciest strings he had to see how it felt but I wanted to exhaust the current reel I have. The health food store guy is expensive for both, last time I out I negotiated a reduction in his price but he was still more expensive than the other two guys.

Do you have any advice re. buying strings?

I was thinking of going for

http://www.tennis-warehouse.com/ISOS...SO-BASELL.html

or

http://www.tennis-warehouse.com/ISOS...SO-BASESP.html

(not sure what difference the gauge makes but I'll read up). I presume string quality makes less difference for a player of my level so something cheap, durable and with generally good reviews make sense. OTOH do I really need to get something durable, given I once went literally a couple of years without breaking a string and am not a powerful hitter? A fancy 200m reel of string typically costs ~$100 which works out as ~$6 per stringing. Would it have any discernible effect on my game? My instinct says probably not but I come from a place of ignorance.

p.s I feel like freelance stringers are pretty common. IMO you'll find a couple near you on Craigslist. Guys that work at the club you get you racket strung at and do some extra stringing at home for beer money, guys that strung in college and now string three to four rackets a week to supplement their income, stuff like that.