Lou_be_Lou

YAY for keeping on going - and superb that splenda now tastes bad. hmmmmmm, i still kick differently on the two sides....... sometimes its little differences in hip position...... supporting leg position...... flexibility and quality of chambering....... practise, practise, practise, but fun practise, so at different speeds and different heights, and doing just the chambering portion of the kick etc etc etc....... the glory of doing it at home is you can mix it up as much as you like.

yay for playing in the playground! And outdoor runs!

Yay for a great weekend. Loving your cunning plan of accidentally overpurchasing veges - brilliant! Fingers crossed re MRI. Brilliant re workouts - am going to have to checkout your killer ab workout.... and yay re full pushups. Might be worth playing with your hand position and arm angle - full military pushups (like stacey does in the video, with hands under shoulders and elbows tucked in) are brutal - wider hands and elbows out (don't shoot me!), much easier, which in turn would be easier for your knee. Then you get the feel of the full pushup, and can mix up easier and harder full pushups. And flexibility - totally a habit and improves with time and practise - within reason - and anatomical contstraints..... i'm blaming the last one for my utter inability to fold my legs into a lotus.....

Feeling much better - a big relief cause last week was such a fatigue week...... I'm figuring I need to be better about lights out by 10pm (which means getting to bed earlier......), as maybe last week was partly my body screaming for sleep. And we don't have running requirements for grading, but they do beast us in gradings (well, the dan grades, so that is fair enough - the rainbow ones, much kinder gradings, but with enough repetition of techniques to generally turn the gradee purple). Its the end of the grading that is the kicker - after techniques and kata and sparring, then lots of padwork things - including being rushed at with a pad from one of several opponents - throw techniques, then next pad........ also with the sparring version where person after person is coming at you........ (agggggghhhhhh!) My last grading I had a personal goal of not up chucking - and I managed it! So there is a fair bit of motivation for being fit....... Plus, looking way way way ahead in jujitsu - my friend who graded there is all of 10 stone and spent his entire grading throwing 15 stone big men around the room...... Need all of the technique, fitness and strength for that kind of challenge...... Apologies for grading talk when you're waiting to work out whether yours is on....... I'm just in awe of how many sessions you get to at your dojo - sounds brilliant. Meantime, kickboxing last night - very good fun, including one step sparring which we don't do very often, and it was good. Then this morning I was back at the gym, good 5k, BWBL3 B workout - could feel the week off in my inverted rows, the rest was fine.

Hi, many thanks, I like this advice - and yep, before derailling this last week I was doing dead hangs, and now that my pull up bar has arrived I'll be able to do reverse pullups at home (the bars at the gym are all so high that reverse pullups weren't happening there just yet). My pullup band has also arrived, so now I just need to get going.....

Good luck with your last push short term....... Somehow 7 weeks can be just such a panic. Yay for pressure cooker stock (i still make my stock just in a sauce pan, sporadically toy with the idea of a pressure cooker for stock - especially for bone soup stock).

Good luck with your knee! Grrrrrrr re the bad throw - but i'm totally impressed with how you've adjusted and worked out what you can do - best wishes for a speedy recovery - and hopefully it is a less drastic injury that your other knee...... apologies for being mia when rubbish was happening. But wow - your mushroom lunch looks amazing. again good luck with keeping on working around your injury - yay for the chiropractor. Also yay for being able to sometimes work from home - getting proper rest for your knee should surely surely help it calm down.

Hi hi, so I dropped out of sight for a week....... Oops. The start of the week (sunday) was great - managed a 12k run, the first long one for me since the start of march and health guff kicking off (sodding gluten), so it was great to do a longer outdoor run. Also had a good kickboxing class. Then, hmmmmm, not so good. The monday (a bank holiday) turned into a duvet day - i just didn't feel right at all, exhausted. This could be to do with having had a social (hmmmm, too much wine and richer food than normal) weekend, or exercising more than i'm used to on the sunday. But the exhaustion lasted for much of the week. So I have not made any of this week's targets. I did manage: 2 x yoga, 1 x jujtitsu (and am going to kickboxing tonight), and while I didn't manage running or gym, I have been for some walks and gardened, so haven't been utterly lazy, just scaled things back out of respect for fatigue. I also only managed three bass practises (but three are much more than none, and two of them were great, more like that please). Paper writing - none since last weekend - but am about to do an hour, and am planning a catchup session tomorrow - so I've missed two sessions, am trying to not miss any more..... Cooking - despite feeling ill I kept eating properly, managed to avoid gluten and did cook a new recipe - asparagus with a dressing involving oil, lemon juice, parmesan, salt, pepper and mint - a bit of an easy recipe this week, but still a new recipe. I'll be back to the gym tomorrow, but i'll just have to "listen to my body" - if I still need to scale things back, well then I will........

Hi Lammis, Yep, liking cooking makes a huge difference to coping with coeliac...... Do you have a favourite cookbook? I've been cooking quite a lot of persian inspired food - love that most of their food is naturally gluten free - saves trying to figure out substitutions....... Its just the level of organisation that sometimes seems difficult (busy weeks where I end up having to pack up breakfasts, lunches and dinners and snacks.......). I'm definitely enjoying trying new recipes at the moment.

Fantastic!

Have a brilliant vacation!

Well done for hearing your body when it called for emergency sleep. Hope your mojo is back! And pantry dinner - YUM! and Kale chips, YUM, hmmmm, must buy kale...... Enjoy your saturday classes.

Yay for getting back into fitness and martial arts! Sounds like you're enjoying it. Have you contacted your Sensei?

Challenge going well - one exercise miss, tried to get to yoga on wednesday, arrived earlier than I usually do, but the class was already completely full! Went to Jujitsu on thursday, yoga on friday after not making it to the gym in the morning (slept in as when my alarm went I was exhausted), but I made up for missing morning gym by going after work. YAY. I've also played bass and worked on my paper (not loving it, but I am doing it, have done every designated session to date..... phew). And this week's new recipe was lime and coriander marinaded grilled chicken, it was ok, but not brilliant, interesting to try.

Ugh re msg and hives - yep you need to recover - think you've got a good strategy with starting out with walking again - then light jog, then a bigger workout once your body is recovered enough to cope......... Takes a while....... and that horrible itching........ grrrrrr.....

Wow, just WOW!

makes them taste nutty and sweet. yum.

Definite progress! Especially if you've being having to cope with rubbish stuff going on outside the challenge. Have you tried a little bit of nice cordial in fizzy water as a soda substitute? Some of them make a delicious combination. Yay for semi-regular arco training. Good luck with week three.

Yay for getting back into your karate classes - and yes, a gap from classes is never ever quite compensated by outside workouts. Must be fabulous to be back there. And yep, eggs are fabulous! Plus, super quick to cook - so there are lots of 10 minute (or less) dinners that you can throw together involving them. Yum.

Yay for getting to classes! Enjoy your school vacation. Brilliant trying out new things. How exciting.

PS when you make your kale crisps remember to set the timer...... rookie mistake, but burnt kale is not the same thing as kale crisps....... i have learnt this many times......

Loving the graph! Plus it is totally skewed by birthday week - so by the time you've had another more normal week it'll be utterly in your favour. I'ld be tempted to discard a couple of birthday weigh ins as outliers...... Yay for all of the progress while trying to do all of the things!

Keep it going - you can do this! All of the this!

Amazing how long body memory takes....... Now I just need to practise and practise and practise. The good news is that i can do all the techniques. Just need to know them without having to be talked through them yet again..... Had fun at the gym this morning - was dreading it, as this was my first academy BWBL3B workout - so involved vertical rows, tricep dips and hanging knee raises (plus other stuff, but those three exercises were the ones that I was concerned about). No need for concern - vertical rows were good (am going to have to figure out what comes next, i suspect lowering the bar slightly more, or just more reps.....) - tricep dips absolutely fine (not whole body weight ones, i used a step, but my legs were out straight in front of me, no cheating leg bends required), and the hanging knee raises worked - I did need a pause in the last set, but because my hands were slipping - so managed 10, 10, 4, 6. Suspect my arms will let me know about this later...... And, continuing the win - my yoga bra dried overnight. Superb!

You're doing amazingly at your challenge! Plus, what a treat for chopper to get to do more running! Yes, tricky getting the speed and distance right when there are two of you to get into condition - but, what a treat for him. Yay for making health and fitness a priority. When i'm asked to do things that clash with workouts, I pick my moments - friends who know that I'm making a fitness push get told that I'd love to, but I'm working out. People who don't know me so well (especially if I can't be bothered explaining), get the "I'm sorry, I have a prior commitment" version. It still works. Hope the sushi was delicious.