Tennis v. Terrible Tim

4-6

Good chance I do have a bacterial infection - bronchitis got better but stagnated for a few days, I got back on the antibiotics yesterday & felt much better today, still not 100% (would fail the stethoscope test), got enough to get me through tomorrow & will hopefully be 100% by Monday.

Tennis, recovered from 0-4 & 2-5 to make a game of it. 40-0 down at 4-5, managed to swing a couple of break points but alas...

Tennis on Monday too, hope to feel up for a little gym work tomorrow - feel remarkably fresh! Summer time in a few hours - I'm going to celebrate by logging my calories!

Squat: 45KG * 12 * 3
Bench Press: 65KG * 12 * 2

Surprised not to noticeably lose strength after 10+ days w no lifting. Maybe because I ate a bunch. Weather absolutely glorious today, but I'll keep gym membership! Tennis tomorrow.

26/03

Kcal: 1790
Protein: 136g

Looking forward to tennis tomorrow.

How can you tell you didn't lose any strength when you lifted these weights?

With the current sickness drink a ton of water get sleep avoid dairy products and boil a pot of water and put a towel over it to inhale the steam. Rookie sickness

Tennis v. Proffesor

3-6, 0-6

First set really good. Second set could have started 2-2, last two games I was done. Still, feel pretty fresh. Overall played a lot like I was a few years ago, same strengths and weaknesses. Backhand reliably returned the ball, but unable to produce depth, consistency and placement. Forehand good cross court, mediocre down the line/inside out. Serve bad, not as awful as last time but how hard can it be to cut double faults down to (at most) one every two service games? Volleying, small sample size but I missed an open court on a point I'd crafted beautifully. Ugh. Fitness, serve will get better as I play more.

Squat - 45KG * 12 * 3 was easier than the 50KG * 12 * 3 I did two weeks earlier.

Bench Press - I went from a pretty easy 65KG * 12 * 3 to a pretty easy 65KG * 12 * 2

"Current sickness" I hope is in the rear mirror. I still produce lots of phlegm but it's a lighter colour & otherwise I feel pretty good? Avoiding dairy is a good idea for me pretty much always

Brobro you squatting less than half body weight for less weight than you did. I'm not trying to hate, just trying to figure you out homie

Squatting history from memory:

2012 - start squatting a la starting strength. Rapidly progress to 110KG * 5 * 3.

2013 - combination of concave improvement curve & spending time training for a triathlon, tennis etc. means squat is still circa 110KG * 5 * 3.

2013 - Herniate my disc. No squatting.

Feb 2014 - Microdiscectomy surgery. Back is weak as a young girl's, do a few months of rehab.

Late May 2015 - start this thread. By this time I'm very fat.

May 2015 - Sep 2016. Combination of not being a member of a gym with a squat rack & injuries (mostly groin strain) mean I do little squatting.

Sep 2016 - After losing a bunch of weight in the first few months of this thread I have stagnated/regressed. Join a new gym with a squat rack.

Sep 2016 - Early in membership walk home with a bunch of groceries in each hand. Miss a stair/step in the darkness & unable to use my arms to balance severely turn my ankle. After two days with limited mobility I am able to walk well but have pain going up and down stairs & squatting is out.

Jan 2017 - Physio says it's OK to squat. Noting that every previous attempt to squat after a long layoff has resulted in severe upper leg tightness to the extent I have restricted walking I decide to recommence squatting at a very low weight. Plan is made to start @ ~40(?) KG * 12 * 2, increase set weight by 2.5KG twice a week & get somewhere near my p.b within three months.

Mar 11 2017 - Up to 50KG * 12 * 3. Progress halted by some sort of weird infection/cold thing which kept me out for a couple of weeks. 50KG * 12 * 3 isn't "challenging", I'm never in doubt of completing the sets but it's tougher than I thought it would be.

Mar 16 2017 - After feeling very slightly under the weather yesterday I have what appears to be bronchitis. I have not squatted since Mar 11 due to playing tennis twice.

Mar 26 2017 - Feeling mostly recovered I squat 45KG * 12 * 3. This is noticeably easier than Mar 11's 50KG * 12 * 3, leading me to believe I have not lost strength in the interim which I had expected to.

Mar 27 2017 - Thighs are tight! But not tight enough to stop me playing tennis!

Mar 28 2017 - Squat 50KG * 12 * 3?

Mar 28 - June 28 2017 - Squat twice a week & am up to 80-90KG * 12 * 3?

Guess that makes sense w your history. How much you weigh?

105.5 KG

Not happy but it's not a disaster. Can get it to something decent in a few months.

You got me thinking - my squat is relatively much weaker than my bench press when 4 years ago they were ~ same level. How much of that, if any is attributable to my back surgery? I had the surgery 3 years & a month ago after which my back was very very weak - would have thought that was long enough for my back to recover but maybe since I've done little squatting in the interim the surgery still has an effect? IDK.

Diverging lat pulldown: 90, 95 lb * 12, 90 lb * 10
Leg press: 200lb * 15 * 2

Racks & benches weren't available - I'm going to count that as three sets of squats & jump straight to 52.5 KG * 12 * 2 next time.

Tennis tomorrow v. Terrible Tim. Maybe I can post a win!?!

You're almost exactly where I am right now weight-wise. What height are you? And what weight goals have you got if any?

I am looking forward to reading your log in the future, although the tennis stuff isn't that interesting to me. Good luck for your goals.

174-175 cm. 80KG would be great. Until I get to 80KG just eat healthy, log calories, exercise sensibly & lose weight at a steady pace. Pausing the weight loss for a bit is fine but don't gain a bunch back.

Great. I'm 179-180, so my goal is to get below 90 and see how things go from there. I'm not logging calories, but otherwise my plans sounds like yours. Good luck!

Tennis v. Terrible Tim

5-7 4-4

His "lob" is awful, really slow & without much height. Unfortunately my smash is even worse. The Professor doesn't give me many opportunities to smash but if I'm going to play Terrible Tim......

Biggest issue is fitness. I was up 5-2, got tired a little & getting to 4-4 in the second set was pretty miraculous. At 3-3 I said I was knackered & we'd need to play a tie break if it got to 4-4, which it did, when some light drizzle gave me the excuse to call it a day. Naturally I'm out of shape & getting fit takes time but I'm still a little concerned by how poor my cardio is & the slow pace of its improvement.

******PSA: Since most of you aren't interested in my tennis exploits I'm going to code the tennis stuff in green from this post forward.

Personally I like the tennis material, and I feel it makes a nice change. Its definitely worth working on your smash a bit. Against a player with no overhead game, even a slow weak lob is an effective shot!

Yeah the tennis stuff is what I enjoy reading most for some bizar reason...I'm waiting for you to take a set off the professor, however color coding doesn't bother me, probably better for others.

Me too! The most I've won in a set against The Professor is three games and I currently don't have the stamina to win anything other than the first set so....

Since my stamina is an issue I've thought of playing more aggressively. However, my game isn't well suited to going for the lines. Still, I'll crank things up marginally.

Ate well today but no logging. Will log tomorrow.

Exercise tomorrow depends how I feel. I'd like to lift but my body may need to rest.

Thursday motivation - Seeing a good friend in late June for the first time since I was at NDW a year ago. She commented then on how good I looked & it would suck to have the annoying/aggravating thing where meet up with an old friend & you're much fatter than the last time they saw you. So, let's work on that.

BTW, legitimate issues about my cardio aside - I played ~90 minutes tennis yesterday & feel pretty good & fresh today. Could I play tennis again today? Not really - I'd get tired early, but I'd be good to go for a couple of sets of doubles. A couple of months ago I wouldn't have been able to play 90 minutes & if I played 60 minutes I'd feel totally ****ty the next day. Finding a one mile walk choresome* level of tired. Today I walked 4 to 4.5 km & it was very enjoyable.

*Word may be made up.

30/03

Kcal: 2527
Protein@ 142g

Hungry hippo - probably correlated with yesterday's exertions.

Exercise tomorrow depends on weather - tennis if dry, tbd if rainy. Need to work chest so I'll do bench press or push ups even if I play tennis.

Tennis is v. Jarvis, who I haven't mentioned for a while. I'd give him a good match but ... he takes a bunch of lessons & is by far the best athlete I play with so probably much better than the last time I played him?

He's tall & if he's able to get his three figure serves in more than three times a set I could be in a world of hurt. I'm happy as long as the weather is good & we're able to get some sustained rallies in.

Today is the first day in while I've been healthy and abstained from non walking related exercises, excited to feel fresh tomorrow a.m.

Tennis v. Jarvis - I got fatigued so quickly as to be concerning. We did a pretty lengthy warmup, 20 minutes or so with no breaks, a decent amount of running around but as it was a warm up no sprinting - after which I was knackered. That shouldn't happen. Maybe it's just because I played too long on Wednesday & am out of shape but it's worrying. Then we played two tiebreaks which he won to 3 & 2 & a set he won to 0 (no deuces). Hmm.

He's improved a lot & I think would have a very competitive match with The Professor. He gets his first serve in more but it's not *that* scary, it's fast enough to pwn me if it hits either of the lines but the rest of the time easy to return. His second serve is awful, slow & shallow, a decent player he wouldn't give him another shot, I hit it in the net or long every time. Ugh.

My performance was so embarrassing that I can't ask him for another match right now - if my fitness is better in a couple of months I'll hit him up.

BTW the weather was crappy today & not much better on Wednesday. Perfect yesterday. I played tennis Wednesday & today but not yesterday :/ Terrible Tim wants to play on Sunday but I have The Professor on Monday. Let's see.

31/03

Kcal: 2470
Protein: 157g

Good totals for a tennis day.

Tiredness is an issue as mentioned. Blood pressure is a healthy 129/80. Really weird - I have a dry cough (no phlegm) which I honestly can't remember having in years. And before today I was regularly producing light coloured phlegm post-bronchitis. I read that producing phlegm for a few days/week after an infection clears is normal, the dry cough (which only has a few times each hour and lasts a few seconds) is pretty odd. As is being so tired.

Tomorrow - let's see. Given my tiredness today it doesn't make sense to do anything exerting, however good I feel. I'll try & get in a walk if the weather is good.

01/04

Kcal: 2342
Protein: 98g

Surprised to see Kcal that high but I had 156 Kcal of crisps & 142 Kcal of smoothie.

Cough is noticeably, but slightly worse. It's still mild. Throat is swollen and raw which is a change since yesterday, but again very mild. Either i) The infection survived my half course of antibiotics & is now mounting a counter offensive, ii) Some unrelated condition (e.g immuno) has caused three respiratory type conditions in a couple of months iii) I'm running bad iv) I'm jumping back into exercise too fast & my body doesn't like it. Should know more in the next couple of days. Condition today really wasn't that bad - I went on a walk and got out of breath a little too easily, I'm coughing a little, my throat is a little swollen etc. But it did mean I didn't do much exercise other than walking and some press ups.

Tomorrow might involve lots of drinking & bad eating but I'll try to keep things under control. Eat a big healthy breakfast, take some fruit out with me. Exercise depends how I feel but as long as I'm well enough to go out I should be well enough to get some sort of lifting in.

Same pattern of illness today. I get out of breath easily, cough a fair amount and now produce some light coloured phlegm but otherwise I'm basically fine. I was full of beans & very talkative today ... couldn't tell anything was wrong apart from the occasional cough. Made me think maybe I have sort of spring allergy. Could that explain my symptoms ~6 weeks ago & since Friday (bronchitis occurrence was totally different)? Well, maybe it does but I don't have an itchy, runny or blocked nose, watery eyes & so on. Really strange.

Managed to keep the eating and drinking under control. 2 pints of Punk IPA at 278 Kcal each is fine. I really would like to get back to exercising though! Tomorrow I'm supposed to play tennis with The Professor. I'll turn up but expect not to last very long. By the time I play him I'll be close to 72 hours sans exercise more strenuous than walking so if I am exhausted after 10 minutes it's definitely due to allergy/illness/whatever. I am just not physically beat up right now. And no, I am not imagining it either. Current mood is a mixture of confusion, embarrassment & exasperation.

OK, I was really confused but this article is setting off loooooots of dinging sounds.

http://www.webmd.boots.com/asthma/guide/asthma-symptoms

That would explain so much. Regardless of whether my diagnosis is or isn't correct there's enough there that I'm going to make a doctor's appointment. Does anyone reading this have asthma? Part of me wants to be diagnosed with asthma since it would explain so much & then I'd have the hope/expectation that the right medication would lead to a big improvement in quality of life. And I'd know what I had rather than worrying. But getting diagnosed with asthma would also suck!