Training Log Archive: Anna

Felt kind of knocked out yesterday after having one mini airplane-sized wine at a department gathering. My first thought was lower tolerance since the pandemic?? But then I was basically in bed for 4 hours last night before sleeping a whole 9 hours. Then woke up this morning still tired and was tired till like 6, despite coffee at 10 and coffee at 3. I hydrated well yesterday too, so idk what it could've been! And sleep tracker didn't notice anything worrying. I've also been sneeze-y, and while I think the timing's too short to have caught anything from the gathering, I'm gonna take an at-home covid test anyway. But yeah, felt shitty and cut this short. Probably still good to get out and get my legs used to some impact though.

The bright side is I saw a cute (stray?) cat who wanted to say hi!

This was with the downgraded bridges (no leg lifts) and added 2-up 1-down calf raises. Band on clamshells but no weight on leg lifts.

PT again! best attempt at remembering exercises:

- 3 x 10 of the leg-back leg lifts each side, one lb
- 3 x 10 of the clamshells each side, yellow band
- 2 laps (30m? 40m?) side steps with small green band on knees
- 2 laps (30m? 40m?) forward/back monster walks w green band on knees
- 3 x 10 each side single-leg RDL, 10lb weight (was harder towards the last reps of each set! lower legs were better rested from the weekend though)
- 3 x 10 bridges (no leg lift)
- 10 regular 2-up, 1-down calf raises each leg
- 3 x 10 2-up, 1-down calf raises, each leg
- 3 x t0 back lunges with front knee in stretchy band to resist against it being pulled in

(and stretches)

Labmate jog! There's another postdoc in my lab who's as old and creaky as me (also has knee problems even! and spends as much $$ as me on PT), so we went on a slow run. Running with someone else slow helped keep me from speeding up and hurting my knee, and as an added bonus, he does similar analyses as I do, enough to have super detailed convos about papers and how they relate to each of our main projects. Got a good recommendation for another paper to revisit to help fix a conceptual problem with an added part of my analysis that I'd ideally be able to include. Seems like running can be a nice scheduled time to chat, as opposed to being in separate offices and not wanting to bother other people/their office-mates. And is less sedentary than going to people's scans ;P

(Knee was kind of iffy towards the end though, and achilles/lower calf felt tight (not where my actual achilles injury had been, luckily)... sat in front of the space heater a bit before attempting knee exercises. This happened despite 2 warm layers on top and warm socks in 50-degree weather, further evidence of my old-ness! Maybe I need extra-heavy socks if it's less than 55.)

same at-home exercises, new easy bridges.

PT!

bridges got downgraded since I had some knee pain with the hard kind.
different variations of stretchy band walks
some weird thing where I try to build up to a single-leg squat by pushing a squishy ball against the wall
single-leg rdl with weights
some other stuff I forgot probably!

Recovery notes: had been having some not-super-immediately-worrying glute tightness that I couldn't figure out how to stretch, but it was gone today. Felt super groggy all morning/lots of the afternoon, despite coffee, and sleep tracker said I wasn't recovered and deducted points for high RHR and medium-high HRV. Goal for the work day was to keep at things even when it was slow, and I felt better by evening and went on a walk to make sure my legs got moving a bit. Finished an important work thing late in the day instead of doing PT, woops, but not gonna stay up later now to do it. Wasn't a perfect week since my last appointment, but knee pain has been minimal, and I subjectively feel like I'm better at doing the bridge leg-lifts stable-ly, which was the hardest part, and noticeable progress is always good.