Worse than I expected, given what I’d read about it often not affecting young people as much, but not super bad in the grand scheme of things. Worst symptoms for me were tiredness and aching in random places. Other people in my household had it pretty bad though and one is still feeling it a bit now, about three weeks since he got it. I probably felt the best of us all.
There were one or two days where I didn’t want to get out of bed but the majority of the time I could have probably gotten on with normal life with a lot of paracetamols and caffeine. Bare in mind I’m at university all online right now though so I’m pretty sedentary anyway, wouldn’t have liked to do anything physical. I don’t know how much was Covid and how much was from being stuck inside but the tiredness seemed to last basically my full isolation and it was hard to find the energy/motivation to do a lot of stuff.
Oh and I also lost my taste and smell for a day which was very weird.
17:00 - Weights High incline dumbbell press: 5, 21x15s (+2)
Head supported dumbbell row: 5, 30x15s (+4)
Crunches: x22 (+2)
Bike ride was a lot of fun again. Pushed it a bit harder this time but still a long way off where I was.
The weights session was just a quick one. I left out legs because they’re still pretty achy from the bike ride and to be honest I couldn’t be bothered. Glad to be progressing still though. Now I’ve reached 30 reps on the rows I’ll make them a lot stricter and try and work my way back up again.
I’m sure you’ll get pretty creative with those 15’s, good luck on the cut.
There seem to be a ton of “lockdown” or “gymless” programs floating around now that a lot of people are in a similar boat as you if you needed to find some additional inspiration.
Finally got my belt today. It came a while ago but I got it as a Christmas present so didn’t try it on until then and it didn’t fit so I had to swap it. Then with having COVID and lockdown in general I’ve only just gotten round to picking it up from the person who got me it.
Seems good so far. Only thing I’m unsure of is the lever keeps opening if I close it when I’m not wearing the belt and sometimes if I breath in with it on. Looked online and some people reported similar things and said it’s because it’s still very stiff and trying to straighten which I’m hoping is the case. Anyone had any experience with this?
Not the sort of progress I wanted. Calories in were down from last week and calories out were up but weight up too. I see two possible reasons for it: I’m recomping a bit now I’ve started lifting again or I’m not tracking accurately. I think most likely the latter however I do definitely feel like I’ve lost some fat so could be both. Even if the tracking is accurate I still missed my targets so I really need to sort that out this coming week.
The main issue I have tracking wise is my girlfriend likes to cook most of our meals. I weigh out some of them but it can be hard with some meals and other times I just don’t want to delay us eating while I mess around with scales. She’s planning to start a diet from Wednesday (it’s her birthday Tuesday) and track calories herself so that should help a lot. On a similar note I didn’t track my calories for dinner yesterday because I had a big chicken dinner made for me and several others and there was no way I could stop us all and weigh everything. I probably ate close to my targets overall because the only other thing I ate that day was about 300 calories of left over bolognese for lunch but can’t know for certain.
Looking at this week, as I mentioned, Tuesday is my girlfriend’s birthday and since we can’t do much to celebrate she wants to at least have some good food. It won’t be the same if I’m there watching what I eat so I won’t even try to track calories but I’m going to make Wednesday a fast day to hopefully counteract the overeating a bit. The rest of the time I’ve lowered my calorie target again and it’s now at 10xBW so I really don’t want to lower it anymore. I’ve also upped my calories burnt target by 100 and dietary compliance needs to improve to make sure I’m on target. Finally, I’m going to put extra effort into my tracking and with my girlfriend on board it should make life a lot easier.
Yeah, lots to work on.
Targets for next week:
Calories: 1870
Protein: 196g
Carbs: 136g
Fats: 60g
Calories burnt: 2600
This was a killer - as close to a max effort as I have ever done on a bike. It’s a loop I did a few times over summer that I’ve decided I’m going to use as a benchmark for my cycling ability/fitness which is why I pushed it so hard.
My PR time around from in September is 18:49 but that wasn’t pushing as hard as today - probably like a 6 or 7 out of 10 effort then vs 9/10 today. However, today was very windy, to the point where a couple of the gusts nearly knocked me off. About half of the loop is an open road in the middle of two fields and a headwind absolutely destroyed me for the last half as you can see from the graph of my speed below.
I’ll repeat it in a couple of weeks, hopefully on a less windy day and hopefully I’ll smash that old PR out of the water.
Wouldn’t worry about that so much as it’s not under pressure.
This:
Is more concerning, in my mind the more pressure you put into the belt breathing in/expanding torso, the tighter is should become, if it ever came undone I’d lose confidence in the belt, no way you’d want to be in the hole of a demanding squat and lose IA pressure due to lever popping out.
My mistake in how I’ve worded it - when I said breathing in I meant like sucking my belly in. If I push out against the belt I can’t even undo the lever with my hand so I think it’s ok. I left it closed overnight so it moulded into a circle a bit more and it was a lot harder to get it to open itself this morning too.
Might be funny for you mate, I’ve spent best part of a week squatting next to a toilet going “are you sure you need to go, if you’re all done, you can get down”
Yeah it was horrible. Where I live is all big open fields so the winds can be pretty strong. That’s the second time I’ve been caught with a big one like that. Couldn’t believe how much it had slowed me down when I saw my speed afterwards.
On the other hand, I once had a big tailwind for a couple of miles down a nice straight road and felt like I was flying. That was fun.
High incline dumbbell press: 5, RP: 23 (+2) - 7x15s
Head supported pause dumbbell row: 5, RP: 12 - 7x15s
Close stance pause squat: 6, RP: 10 - 6
Dumbbell RDL: 5, 20x15s (+3)
Crunches:RP: 24 (+2) - 5
Made these into rest pause sets with a slow 12 count between the mini-sets. Happy I’m continuing to progress reps on most things. I think I’ve got those squats perfect now in terms of targeting my quads so hopefully I can start pushing the numbers up there too.
15:30 - Weights High incline dumbbell press: 5, 16x15s
Head supported pause dumbbell row: 5, 14x15s (+2)
Close stance pause squat: x6
Dumbbell RDL: 8x15s
Crunches: x14
Bike ride was good again. Pressing wise, I don’t think I’m recovered from the previous weight session. Those rest pause sets were probably a bit much so I’ll only do them occasionally for pressing at least. Hamstrings and abs were still sore too. The leg stuff wasn’t particularly hard, just to do something.
Finally starting to feel the effects of these very low calories but my weight was down by a decent amount when I got weighed this morning which is a first for this cut.
