Challenge Four: Day Forty-Four

Breakfast: Nothing.

Mid-Morning: Nothing.

Lunch: Nothing.

Mid-Afternoon: Nothing.

Evening: Nothing.

State of Being:

Yes, today was my fasting-day for the week. Feeling pretty good.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to have to stop the 30-Day Leg-Blitz, for now. Even having stepped down the intensity, as I did for this try, it’s still too much.

To clarify, it’s not muscle pain that has me concerned. My leg and low-back muscles are sore, but it’s the constant pain in my knees that gives me pause. It’s gotten so bad that my last round of squats, I think I was lowering myself less than an inch on each repetition. The pain in my knees was just unbearable.

I think, at this point, I’m still too heavy, just like before in Challenge Two when the goal was full upright mobility, it seems that really having a dedicated squat-challenge is a bit out of reach for the time being. My schedule was three-days-on, one-day-off and that clearly has not been sufficient time to allow my knees to recover fully. So, I’m still going to squat as part of my regular exercise, y’know… on leg days, and of course I’m still going to get my daily walking-laps in. But, as far as the leg-blitz is concerned, I'm going to take discretion as the better part of valor here and be done with it, ...for now.

I will attempt it again once I’m in the low 400s (430 or lower) weight-wise. Once I’m within striking distance of the 300s, I’ll feel a lot more confident about taking it on. That may even be light-enough to consider getting my knees worked on. For the time being, getting my menisci (the shock-absorptive cartilage-cushions in the center of the knee joints,) refilled with artificial cartilage would be futile, as my weight would simply crush them flat again within a matter of months, if not weeks.

Speaking of work-outs, yesterday was an Arms-Day for my resistance training and I decided to up the weight I used for each exercise by five pounds. This meant my side lateral raises (shoulders) went from twenty to twenty-five pounds (each arm), my overhead triceps extensions went from twenty to twenty-five pounds (again, each arm), my curls went from fifteen to twenty, and my wrist-curls went from ten to fifteen. Each exercise is usually three sets of fifteen repetitions. Considering the weight-bump, I decided to cut each set’s rep-count down to ten.

For the rest of the day, my arms were very sore! lol In particular, my shoulders and triceps felt like heavy stones. Even today, something as simple as the motion of bringing my 46oz water-bottle from my desktop to my lips causes my arm to pinch and throb in certain places. It’s not bad, but still noticeable.

I had my evening shake about fifteen minutes after I’d cooled down from lifting, so I know the recovery had a lot of help through the night.

See you tomorrow!

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