A Few Take-Aways

You can all stop worrying about me now, my neck is fully healed and I’m no longer struggling to keep my head up straight.

After a gruelling week of looking completely ridiculous, craning my neck around corners to check that it’s safe to cross the road… I’m finally free.

I know. I’m being very dramatic, but this is the first injury I’ve had in the gym and on a more serious note, being forced to stay home was harder than I expected. I just didn’t realise quite how crucial exercise was for my mental health.

But, despite the difficulty, I was sensible and waited 15 days between the injury and my first session exercising my traps again. I took 5 rest days in that period and for my days in the gym, I focused entirely on exercises that avoided any use of my shoulders.

I can’t stress enough just how valuable this was. The worst thing I could have don is return to shoulder workouts too soon and cause more damage to my body, and also worsen my mental health with more workouts skipped.

The restrictions to my workout also gave me more time to work on cardio fitness - something I’ve been severely lacking for a while now.

I have plans to get back into competitive sports, either football or American football, and I know that I wouldn’t last 15 minutes with my current cardio levels.

So I spent 3 of my sessions in the last fortnight, pushing myself on the bike machines. (I hate treadmills with a passion). I managed to push past my previous maximum’s of time & distance. I did need DisneyPlus on in the background to keep me distracted from the pain, but I’m just glad I finally made time for cardio.

I’m hoping to keep up this trend until I feel ready to hit the football pitch and get back into competitive sports.

One downside to all this cardio, is that I’m burning so many calories I’ve been eating two dinners most nights. The problem is, after I’ve spent 45 minutes slaving away for meal number 1, I can't summon the energy to make something else.

Unfortunately, this means I’ve been resorting to takeaways, and worst of all, Dominos and cookie dough. I caved once and I fell very quickly back into my old ways of ordering multiple times a week.

It's mostly okay, as I’m still remaining in a calorie deficit most days (with my recommended intake after exercise at around 3400kcals). But, I know it's not good for me. It would be way better to double up on chicken and rice, than to cram in a couple thousand calories of saturated fat and carbs.

Regardless, it’s all about the ups and downs. As the blog name suggests - I’m used to being all over the place with my diet and exercise, but I’ve learned a lot in the last two weeks. Here are the key takeaways…

• It’s okay to have a few rest days if you need it.
• Cardio is just as important as weight training.
• Takeaways aren’t terrible as long as you use the calories and have them in moderation. (Maybe 4 times a week isn't great)

I’m still learning and failing regularly at all three of these…

But that's okay too. After all, consistent inconsistency is kind of my thing.