Wow, good thing I posted that challenge here - I almost forgot about it today. I must have been too busy playing poker.
I attempted my first set, and already had to stop short several times through. One problem was that those handles got really uncomfortable, so I had to put my workout gloves on, which are usually intended for lifting dumbbells. Once I got everything set up and ready to go, I barely made it through the first set. Then I attempted the next one, and collapsed after the 9th rep.
Rather than ruling the challenge a failure on day one, I decided to merely downgrade myself to the next lowest column in the workout program, but it was futile - I couldn't do even one additional pushup after that. Very humiliating...
I can always retry at a later point this week, but it's worrying. My physical labor job really must be getting to me. Just last week, I went into a squat position one time at work to write some numbers on a palette, and found myself unable to get up without propping myself up with my arms. My feet are also often still hurting a little, even though I had over two days of rest by now.
I don't know if I'm just horribly out of shape or if it's something more serious, but I think I should keep an eye on it, and possibly even see a doctor if this gets worse.
As for the challenge, I'd hate to give up on it already, so maybe I'll find another way to make it work.
I think you´re just out of shape. In such cases you should start carefully and slowly! Don´t forget that you´ve lost a lot of weight. This means not only loosing fat, but unfortunately also muscle mass. This is exactly what happened to me during the last week: not able to get up from bed, eating very poorly, I´ve lost some muscle. When you start re-building it, you should start slowly with low expectations. Just do a bit less. Do not expect to be as fit as you were.
This is what I´m going to do today at tennis. I won´t be able to hit full power forehands and backhands and servings! I go for stability and safety today, avoiding unforced errors and double faults.
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I admire your perseverance!
Thank you. Well, my poor performance just demonstrates how out of shape I am, and how much I need to train. Deciding to let it go just because I couldn't do it the way I originally planned would be the worst thing I could do now.
Originally posted by Primrose6789
I think you´re just out of shape. In such cases you should start carefully and slowly! Don´t forget that you´ve lost a lot of weight. This means not only loosing fat, but unfortunately also muscle mass. This is exactly what happened to me during the last week: not able to get up from bed, eating very poorly, I´ve lost some muscle. When you start re-building it, you should start slowly with low expectations. Just do a bit less. Do not expect to be as fit as you were.
What worries me a bit are those persisting tensions in my feet, which were still noticeable today even right after getting a nice long sleep. Maybe I should use one of those spiky massage balls for my feet during my next poker session. At least my job involves plenty of physical work too, and I'm probably doing the equivalent of several pushups on a typical work day already, but clearly, I have some catching up to do.
Starting slowly is exactly what I'm going to do. I decided to drop down to the next lowest column in the program, which is meant for people who managed to do 6-10 pushups during their initial test. Now that I had some rest after my failed attempt last night, I'm happy to report that I made it through my first day.
This new plan required me to do sets of 6, 6, 4 and 4 pushups, with one final set of at least 5, or more if I'm able to do any additional ones. I barely made it - I attempted to do a sixth one during the final set but didn't manage to fully push my body up. Also, I added a couple more during the fourth set as punishment, because I thought that my first one or two pushups in that set weren't executed well enough.
Still, I made it. Tomorrow will be a rest day, as far as this challenge is concerned. On Wednesday, I will be required to do 6, 8, 6, 6 and 7+ pushups. Thursday will be another rest day, and then it's 8, 10, 7, 7 and 10+ pushups on Friday.
Originally posted by Harrier88
On Wednesday, I will be required to do 6, 8, 6, 6 and 7+ pushups.
Made it - even though I had a pretty tough work day with loads of crates to be hauled under time pressure behind me. I remember that with my past attempts at this program, one major problem were often busy sports schedules which meant that rest days were rarely true rest days. The situation hasn't really improved in that regard, but I'll try not to let it make me quit this time.
On my 7+ set at the end, I managed an eighth one, and maybe could have squeezed out a few more, but I need some strength for work tomorrow too. What I have noticed is that it is absolutely crucial to breath out on your way down when you're doing pushups, it makes it much easier to keep going.
There shall be one more workout on Friday, where I'm supposed to do sets of 8, 10, 7, 7 and 10+ reps.
Originally posted by Harrier88
There shall be one more workout on Friday, where I'm supposed to do sets of 8, 10, 7, 7 and 10+ reps.
Sorry Trolls - I'm not even going to try. Work was really tough this week, especially in the last two days, my feet are hurting and my legs feel like lead. I'm aware that pushups mostly engage the upper body, but that one could use some rest too.
Hopefully, I'll be in a better state tomorrow evening, so I can maybe resume the challenge then and make it through the week after all.
Made it! After a rough start, I managed to make it through Week One after all, without cutting any corners. I did 12 pushups on my final open-ended set this time.
Week Two will surely be tough, not only because it has more demanding requirements, but also because I happen to have a few sessions of American football practice that week, since I'll be back to early work shifts. I'll see what I can do about it. If all else fails, I'll just repeat it the following week.
For now, though, I think I have earned a day of rest.
Day 1: 9, 11, 8, 8, 11+
Day 2: 10, 12, 9, 9, 13+
Day 3: 12, 13, 10, 10, 15+
Not sure yet when those days will be... I'll see if I can start tomorrow already.
Oh, and at the end of the week, there is supposed to be another test in order to determine what kind of plan I will be following in the next week.
Primrose, meanwhile, is getting ready for her next vacation trip this weekend - will she have time to cook up some delicious fast food treats until then?
Pushups? Give me a break... I started my work week by having to unload a truckload of huge 80 kg (I think) grills on Monday. Football practice is not getting any easier either with those aching limbs.
My goal for this week will be to repeat at least the last workout, which is the one from last Saturday, with sets of 8, 10, 7, 7 and 10+ pushups. Ideally, I'd repeat the Wednesday workout of 6, 8, 6, 6 and 7+ reps before that one too. The idea is to sustain the progress from last week, so I can hopefully continue with the plan next week.
No worries, those are just the adjustments you sometimes have to make to your workout plans when IRL stuff interferes.
Okay, so we didn't go ahead with the pushups last week due to my busy schedule, but that's not a problem - we'll just do it next week, then.
I'll try to jump straight into my original plan for week 2, but if I notice that it's too tough, I'll just drop down to week 1 and repeat that program again.
There's nothing scheduled besides work, which I hope will be kind to me this week.
You know, I'm starting to suspect that this workout program was designed with students and white collar workers in mind...
I had to unload another truck container on Monday and didn't really feel like a ton of exercising when I returned home late at night after my shifts. I'll get back to the workout... but I should really repeat the sets from week 1 rather than moving on already. It's tough to make any progress when you always have to do physical labor on your intended rest days, but that's a situation I know from my previous attempts too.
Things are a little hectic for me in general and I would love to have some time to just loaf around, honestly... yes, the Baking Challenge from earlier this year, it is still going. Most kinds of dough tend to require several hours of preparation, however, which makes me want to stick to simpler meals at the moment.
Primrose is currently enjoying a very nice North Sea vacation and will be back in a couple of weeks - and you can be sure that I have several things planned for her already.
Well, I don't like to do it, but after so much procrastination and schedule slippage, I think I'll just have to take the L on that fitness challenge. At least for now.
It's the same situation as most of the other times I've tried this challenge before, really. You start out disciplined enough, but then get caught up in other stuff, especially on your supposed "rest days". An excellent example occurred 5-6 years ago, when I started with this challenge, dutifully doing my sets of ten or so pushups, and then went to a Krav Maga class in the evening - I don't remember if it was on a rest day or a workout day. We were warming up, and the instructor casually told us to do four sets of 50 pushups... according to that workout plan, I'm supposed to get to one set of 50 pushups after five weeks of gradual build-up.
Back then, I just cheekily replied "all right, so what's the real warm-up drill then?", but my instructor let us know that he was serious. So I did as many as I could do, returned home quite exhausted, was not able to workout for a few days... and then I was out of it again. It was a little like that this time too, except with work and football now interfering instead.
So this challenge will have to be dropped once again, but I hope that I can return to it eventually. Perhaps in Fall, when football season is over and I hopefully got another job too. Both Primrose and I have been really looking forward to the season of Fall for a while now in general, especially her, but that doesn't mean we can't have some nice Summer fun in the meantime. In fact, we have some plans already, and we are looking forward to meeting up again very soon.
The poker challenges may continue too, now that Prim is back from her vacation and has a little more time on her paws. I heard that she already had plans to return to the tables, maybe we'll face off again while we're at it.
It had been over a month since our last meetup, and we have both been dying to get another one going. Finally, we had some time. And after having included a version of American football in our last challenge, which arguably gave me an unfair advantage, Prim should feel right at home here.
It was time for some racket sports - the grindette's specialty. Actually, we originally just planned to play some badminton, for which I ordered some equipment. As it turned out, though, that badminton net I ordered included some cool extras I wasn't even aware of. For one thing, it included badminton rackets and shuttlecocks, which made the extra ones I bought pretty pointless, though I guess it doesn't hurt to have some spare ones. More importantly, however, it also included those paddles:
They look like some of those kiddie things that you can mess around with, and that's kind of what I was expecting them to be like too. It turned out that those are pickleball paddles, and while this is mostly a recreational sport, there are actually some serious competitions in it too.
We tried that one first, just a couple of rallies to get warmed up, and Primrose discovered that her tennis skills can be nicely applied in this game. Surprisingly, you could even apply some decent spin to the ball with those wooden paddles. We were both pretty impressed.
We then did some similar badminton rallies. This time, Prim's tennis experience was not as useful as before, as she found out. The rackets were quite different to the ones she's used to, and that shuttlecock behaves completely unlike any tennis balls too. She quickly picked up on this game too, though.
With all of that out of the way, we were ready to set up some courts to get started for real. First, we tried this one:
It's one half of a so called Speedminton (or Crossminton) court (we were just sloppily throwing it on the ground at that point to see how much space we have for it). You're supposed to place two of those courts on the ground at a distance of about 12.80m to each other, and then play without any nets. It sounded interesting, but that court took up more space than we expected, and besides - we do have a net. We therefore decided to skip this version and set up a proper badminton court right away.
Sorry about that messy looking net in the picture. Normally, you're supposed to put it over those metal posts, we hadn't figured it out yet at that point, so we only attached it to some little plastic hooks which are merely supposed to give some extra stability once the rest is set up. It worked quite well, we could have played a proper game in there... but then decided that we enjoyed pickleball the most, so we lowered the adjustable net to ground level and gave it a go.
Despite her aching Achilles tendon, Primrose was quite competitive... and I did my best to give her a good run for her money. The grass in my backyard is not exactly the lawn of Wimbledon, of course, so while those pickleballs bounced much better than I expected, you're still often better off pretending like you're playing on a beach when Prim applies some topspin to her strokes, and try not to let any of them bounce if you have the chance.
We did not keep score, and while Primrose commented on some impressive returns from me (even some diving ones), I think she clearly dominated the court here with her superior experience. Therefore, despite having no official score, I hereby declare Prim the winner of today's live challenge.
It was a lot of fun, and we mostly played for practice purposes anyway this time. We will surely come back to these games, and maybe we will one day return to a "proper" Troll Challenge with scoring and all. Also, I still hope that there can be a real Primrose vs Harrier tennis match by the end of 2024, with me looking to get into this sport too at the end of this summer.
Most importantly, though, we finally enjoyed another meetup, and we hope to get a second one going this month. It's really too bad that our distance prevents us from doing this more often.
Yesterdays Troll-sports really felt like home to me!! :f_love::f_love: I loved this paddle-tennis, because noticed that indeed you can play topspin and slice with them. Almost tennis! Feels like home! :banana::banana:
We decided not to take count because unfortunately I´m injured at the moment and couldn´t move as quickly as I normally do. So, I had to be careful.
Before the Troll sports we had lunch in an awesome Sushi restaurant with all you can eat. ♠_biggrin: Harrier served some really creative and delicious smoothies, I had brought along Mint from my garden, actually for a Mojito, but Harrier had another great and creative idea. He had an extremely refreshing and delicious green summer smoothie, I don´t know the name, I don´t know the ingredients, but I´m sure, Harrier can tell more about that one.
Originally posted by Primrose6789
Harrier served some really creative and delicious smoothies, I had brought along Mint from my garden, actually for a Mojito, but Harrier had another great and creative idea. He had an extremely refreshing and delicious green summer smoothie, I don´t know the name, I don´t know the ingredients, but I´m sure, Harrier can tell more about that one.
Glad you liked them. Those drinks weren't my own creations, I got the recipe for that green drink over here, where it is known as a Mint Cooler. It involves lime cordial, blended mint leaves and some basic soda water.
I will probably post about them on my blog eventually in more detail. I already posted before about that orange smoothie which also served yesterday. We actually made a sugar free vegan version this time, with almond milk and erythritol.
Yes, due to my lactose intolerance and my mostly healthy diet, low in sugar, Harrier made a nice variant of that delicious drink. Almond milk instead of milk and erythritol instead of sugar! Like that one too, liked ALL of them, the green one is just my absolute favorite!!
Originally posted by Primrose6789
Yes, due to my lactose intolerance and my mostly healthy diet, low in sugar, Harrier made a nice variant of that delicious drink. Almond milk instead of milk and erythritol instead of sugar! Like that one too, liked ALL of them, the green one is just my absolute favorite!!
I found this at a local warehouse store: https://www.volupta.com/monk-fruit-sweetener
I didn't know what the sweetener in it was until I checked.
Of all the non-sugar sweeteners we've tried this is the first one that is approved by Mrs Vorpal
I don't sweeten much of anything (arguably I'm sweet enough already), but I have tried in on strawberries, raspberries and in coffee.
Quite acceptable.
I have no idea what role the monk fruit plays in the mix.
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I don't sweeten much of anything (arguably I'm sweet enough already)
You are a lot like me in that regard. I only really sweeten things if I'm following a recipe that calls for it. I don't add any sugar or sweetener to coffee or tea either.
Well, my poor performance just demonstrates how out of shape I am, and how much I need to train. Deciding to let it go just because I couldn't do it the way I originally planned would be the worst thing I could do now.
In fact, we have some plans already, and we are looking forward to meeting up again very soon.
