Written October 17, 2024
reviewed 10/27
Hello Dear Readers,
For the first time this season, I completed all ten intended pullups. During summer, I had physically intensive chores, such as lawn mowing, and I had to drop off some of my muscle training exercises. Pull-ups are one of the exercises that dropped out. Due to my kidney condition, I am restricted in protein intake. In early summer, I noticed that I had difficulties keeping my ideal weight. Since I can eat less protein than a healthy adult would consume. I suspected I lost my muscles. I made choices to keep running and less muscle training. I wanted to get back to it in the Fall.
I had difficulty doing my pull-ups for the first time since I dropped out of the exercise after a few months. I had lost muscle endurance altogether. I felt that lactic acid accumulated quickly, and I had no power to continue. It has been some time since I added back pull-up and pull-over muscle exercises to my summer routine. I gradually gained back my muscle endurance and strength. Today, I had to drop off after the first 5, but after a short break, I finished them. I’ll keep trying to get closer to getting them all done without having to take a break, but as long as I get them all done, I’m pretty satisfied.
With the compromising kidney conditions, I need to be patient with anything I will do with my body. No matter how much I want to gain my muscles quickly, exercising more than my body can handle could cause unwanted muscle loss or, even worse, an injury. I still need to get my pullover count back up to 10, but I’m sure that happen. I have to be patient.
My journey to getting back to what I could have done continues. I’ll need to work out a new exercise schedule today. After I can increase my pullups and pullovers to sets of 10, I can add dips and leg lifts to the routine and eventually start doing bicep curls again. My wife noted that doing the same exercises daily was not a good strategy and that I should spread them out more instead. This way, I think I’ll focus on a single exercise type each day of the week, and this may be something that I can maintain during the lawn mowing season, too.