Tag: Stroke Recovery

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Sore Quads, Smart Squats, and Rethinking My Training

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

I’ve been running for nearly a decade. A few years ago, I added resistance training. And yet—brace yourself—there’s one thing I somehow never did: leg strength training.

Yes, I run. A lot. I convinced myself that running was leg day. Turns out, that logic only works until it doesn’t—usually in the form of injury. Somewhere along the way, it finally clicked: runners also need resistance training for their legs.

My wife has known this all along.

She does resistance training six days a week, and she works her legs especially hard. Her reasoning is simple: cardio doesn’t fully train leg strength. Recently, she’s taken it even more seriously, and the results are obvious. Her legs are noticeably stronger than before.

So I made a decision.
I would join leg day—late, but sincere.

I introduced squats into my routine, and my quadriceps responded immediately by filing soreness reports. That’s how I know something new is happening. I do have to be careful, though. Once a week, I already run 10 kilometers, and our neighborhood is aggressively hilly. My legs aren’t exactly underworked.

Still, the soreness tells me something important: I’m using muscle fibers that running alone doesn’t reach. Whether increasing strength first will eventually improve my speed is still an open question—but early signs suggest I’m on the right path.

As with everything else, I’m introducing this change slowly. My kidney condition limits how much protein I can consume, so I can’t afford to destroy too many muscle fibers at once. At the same time, muscle growth requires some breakdown. Balancing those two realities is the real workout.

To stay honest, I track my biometrics using our scale—water percentage, protein, bone mass, muscle mass, weight—and I cross-check all of that with quarterly blood work. Numbers don’t lie, even when motivation does.

For now, the goal isn’t speed.
The goal is durability.

I’ll continue monitoring, adjusting, and easing leg exercises into my routine over the next few months. After nearly ten years of running, it seems only fair to finally give my legs the attention they deserve—outside of just asking them to carry me uphill.

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When I Optimized for Temperature and Forgot About Time

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

This morning, I made what felt like a perfectly reasonable decision: stay in bed a little longer because it was cold. Very cold. Also, there was no immediate pressure to run—it wasn’t even close to the warmest part of the day yet.

This logic was flawless.
Unfortunately, it was also dangerous.

I waited too long.

By the time I finally started my day, my carefully imagined schedule had already begun to unravel. Saturdays are chore-heavy for me. I do a lot around the house and fit in a 10-kilometer run on top of it. Delaying the start meant everything else slid later… and later… and later.

When I returned from my run, dinner was already behind schedule. I could tell immediately—my wife was not thrilled.

My wife runs life on a timeline. She schedules days and weeks in advance. Cold days and hot days do not interfere with her morning exercise routine. Her internal clock does not negotiate. Sometimes I think she wishes I were more like her. Today, I wished that too.

I felt bad knowing I’d disrupted her carefully structured day.

Normally, when things go wrong because of me, my wife quietly adjusts her tasks so she doesn’t waste time waiting. Today, though, the ripple effects were harder to contain.

Saturday evening is grocery time—specifically a very precise window when the store is less crowded. She also meal-preps for the following week, packing ingredients with recipes so cooking is easy for me. Any delay pushes everything later, including bedtime. She doesn’t like food sitting around unorganized. Neither does her conscience.

By the time I started washing dishes, we were already 45 minutes past our usual grocery time. I panicked, stopped mid-dish, and suggested finishing later—without realizing that this decision now blocked her from organizing groceries afterward.

Efficiency, I had learned, was optional today.

While I was scrambling, my wife quietly rearranged some of her Sunday tasks just to keep the day moving. Then she tackled grocery sorting anyway, because that’s what she does. Later, she gently reminded me of a lesson I apparently needed to relearn: schedule backward.

Start with the fixed commitments.
Work back to the run.
Then decide when sleeping in is actually allowed.

So yes, next time I’m tempted to wait for optimal running temperatures, I’ll also remember this: time waits for no one—and neither does the grocery schedule.Warm legs are nice.
An undisturbed household system is nicer.

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One Push-Up a Week and a Year of Quiet Progress

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

Today marks a small but meaningful milestone for me—one that took an entire year to earn.

About a year ago, I started doing push-ups once a week. I began at 20 and made myself a very modest promise: add one more rep each week. No heroics. No sudden transformations. Just one extra push-up. Today, that number reached 72.

When you have compromised kidneys, muscle-building looks a little different. I can’t eat as much protein as a healthy adult male, so progress doesn’t arrive quickly—or loudly. I started running about a decade ago, but it was only in the last few years that I began adding other forms of exercise. Even then, I did it cautiously.

Summers are already physically demanding thanks to lawn mowing and general activity, and my body doesn’t recover the way it used to. So instead of piling workouts on top of each other, I started doing something less exciting but far more effective: adding things slowly.

I also tweaked how often—and how much—I train. Rather than working everything in one session, I focus on a few selected muscle groups each time. The goal isn’t exhaustion. The goal is regeneration. Training your body not to recover is not a win.

Since switching to this approach, something unexpected happened: it worked.

My wife mentioned that I look noticeably leaner than I did a few years ago, back when running was my only form of exercise. I’ve noticed it too—mostly because my pants are tighter. And no, it’s not because my legs suddenly bulked up. Progress shows up in mysterious ways.

The push-up plan itself has been almost comically simple. One rep per week. That’s it. Occasionally, I misremember what number I hit the week before, which means I may have skipped a number or repeated one. But honestly? I don’t care. What matters is that I showed up every week for a full year.

That alone feels worth celebrating.

I’d like to reach 100 push-ups someday, but that will take most of another year—and I’m perfectly fine with that. I’m not in a rush. Each week, I’ll try the new number. If I succeed, I’ll add one more for next time. Thanks to a spreadsheet, I can now be reasonably sure I’m not accidentally cheating or sabotaging myself.

A fitness journey doesn’t need to be dramatic to be real. It just needs to be yours. I’ve accepted my kidney disease and built my workouts around what my body can actually handle.

And one push-up at a time, it turns out, is more than enough.

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How I’m Training Myself to Drink Water Like an Adult

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

Today’s main objective is simple, practical, and surprisingly difficult: drink water on schedule.

My wife recently bought us matching one-liter water bottles with hour-by-hour drinking markers printed right on them. The idea is elegant—drink steadily throughout the day instead of realizing at 8 p.m. that you’ve consumed approximately nothing.

Everyone should drink water regularly, kidney issues or not. In my case, it’s non-negotiable. My doctor reminds me—firmly—that I need at least 1.5 liters a day. Concentrated urine is not something my already overworked kidneys appreciate, and kidney stones are absolutely not on my wish list.

The problem is not knowing this.
The problem is forgetting.

Over the past week, my routine has been hijacked by distractions: lab appointments, our anniversary dinner, Thanksgiving. All good things—but all excellent at pulling me away from my desk, my notebook, and any awareness of hydration. By the time I noticed, I was hours behind.

So I did what any desperate person would do: I guzzled water to catch up.

This was a mistake.

My body did not appreciate the late-day hydration sprint and politely informed me of its displeasure by waking me up in the middle of the night with a bladder emergency. Lesson learned: hydration is not a cram session.

My wife bought these bottles because she forgets to drink water when she’s writing, reading, or deeply focused on anything at all. She wisely bought one for me too, because I apparently have the same flaw.

Before this bottle, I had no real sense of how much water I was drinking. Now I can see it clearly—and unfortunately, that clarity revealed that several days last week ended with frantic water catch-up. There’s no good excuse for that.

We buy five-gallon jugs from the grocery store and use a water dispenser at home. Between the two of us (and occasional help from the refrigerator dispenser), we now go through about five gallons a week. Ever since getting these bottles, that number has become very consistent—which strongly suggests we were under-hydrating before.

So today, I’m doing things differently. No catch-up drinking. No late-night flooding. Just steady, boring, responsible hydration—one hour mark at a time.If all goes well, my reward will be the most luxurious thing of all:
an uninterrupted night’s sleep.

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When One Missed Task Knocks Over the Whole Day

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

Today, I learned—once again—that my schedule is only as intense as its weakest forgotten task.

The first crack appeared when I realized I hadn’t prepared the kombucha bottles on Wednesday. Typically, I fill them with sanitizing solution so they’re ready to rinse on Thursday and usable by Friday. This time? Completely skipped. That meant starting the process today and planning to rinse them after we returned from my sister’s house. Already, the day was improvising without my consent.

Next came the laundry problem. I had also forgotten how being away would collide with my laundry schedule—specifically, sheet-changing day. We do have a second set of sheets, but the matching pillowcases disappeared during one of our last two moves and have never been seen again. That meant the current ones had to be washed, dried, and put back on the bed all in the same day.

No pressure.

After my shower, I started the laundry, timing it carefully in my head and hoping it would finish washing just in time to move everything into the dryer before we left. This was optimistic math.

One thing occupational therapy taught me after my brain injury was how essential time management systems are. Trauma made me more forgetful and shortened my attention span. I can easily lose track of what I’m doing—or what I was about to do.

So, through trial and error, I built a system. I remember one anchor task in the morning and linking everything else to it in a chain. Wake up → medication → breakfast → next task → next task. It works beautifully… until it doesn’t.

Holidays are natural enemies of systems.

I love Thanksgiving. Truly. But it rearranges routines just enough to break everything quietly. I suddenly realized I’d missed a few steps earlier in the week, and now I was paying for it in delayed laundry and bottle logistics.

We had already told my sister we’d be on a specific schedule. The plan was to complete everything before leaving. Reality disagreed. The washing machine still needed ten more minutes when it was time to go, meaning the dryer would have to wait until we returned.

At that point, I could feel the pressure building. Too many tasks were being deferred to “later,” and I knew that meant a busier, more chaotic evening. Still, there wasn’t much choice. The schedule had already gone off the rails—I was just managing the damage now.

Some days, the system wins.
Some days, the holiday wins. Today was clearly the latter—but at least I know why.

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A Day of Labs, and Strategically Skipping a Run Without Guilt

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

After checking the weather forecast yesterday and mentally mapping out today’s schedule, I reached a firm conclusion: squeezing in a run would be heroically unpleasant. I have a blood draw scheduled for 1:30 p.m., which makes a midday run less “healthy habit” and more “logistical nightmare.”

My wife kindly took the day off to drive me to the lab. My nephrologist recently changed lab locations, and what used to be a walkable errand is now a 39-minute drive. Progress, apparently, comes with mileage.

Since she already had the day off, my wife suggested stopping by a secondhand bookstore on the way home. We haven’t been in nearly a year, but we like wandering through shelves where books cost less and come with mysterious past lives. Used books don’t bother either of us—stories age well.

The drive itself was pleasant. Being driven to a lab is significantly nicer than walking there, especially when the destination includes an underground parking garage shared by two identical buildings. Naturally, we took the wrong elevator and ended up in the wrong building.

Everything looked… medical. That was the problem. After a moment of quiet confusion and mutual suspicion, I realized we were definitely not where we were supposed to be. Medical offices are impressively interchangeable. We regrouped, descended, ascended again, and eventually found the correct lab.

Afterward, we rewarded ourselves with a visit to the bookstore. My wife browsed happily and found Lolita, which she’s wanted to read but avoided because of its eye-watering Amazon price. The secondhand copy solved that problem instantly. She didn’t care that it wasn’t new—victory is victory.

Once we returned home, reality resumed. Supper needed cooking. Pies need to be baked for tomorrow’s feast. And just like that, the run officially exited today’s agenda.

Lessons Learned

I usually try to schedule appointments on non-running days to avoid this exact situation, but the lab’s availability didn’t cooperate this time. So it goes.

Being out for several hours tightened the rest of the day’s schedule—for both of us. Even on her day off, my wife had to reshuffle everything to fit the lab visit. Efficiency never truly clocks out.

At least I’ve already completed my running goals for the year, so I feel no pressure to “make up” today’s missed run. If anything, the extra rest might help me recover fully and push harder on Friday.

Sometimes progress looks like running.

Sometimes it looks like skipping a run—with intention, books, and pie preparation waiting at home.

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Soup Season, Anniversary Planning, and the Great Headset Experiment

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

Today felt properly cold—the kind of cold that makes you question every life choice involving going outside. Thankfully, we had already scheduled soup for dinner, which felt like winning the weather lottery.

Normally, I’m not a big soup person. It’s fine, it’s food, it’s warm—but I don’t dream about it. That said, once the temperature drops, soup and I get along much better. And this particular soup has quietly been promoted to “winter favorite” status in our house.

Aside from making soup, today turned into a planning day. First, there’s Friday: my wife and I are celebrating our wedding anniversary by going to a new restaurant. This is a departure from our usual routine, which means my inner scheduler immediately asked, “Okay, but when are we running?” I have to adjust my plan for today.

Time Management

After checking the restaurant’s opening time and backtracking our ideal departure, I calculated that I’ll need to start my run by 9:00 a.m. to be cleaned up and ready to leave on time. To make sure this is realistic and not fantasy math, I’m going to test it tomorrow: start the run at 9, then see what time I’d theoretically be ready to go out.

Headset Charging Logistics

The second problem looming over my otherwise simple life: headset charging logistics.

My previous headset battery died a tragic early death, likely because I had been charging it overnight like a phone. With the new one, I’ve switched to a healthier habit—charging it at my desk while I eat breakfast. So far, this has worked beautifully, and the battery seems to be aging more gracefully than the last one.

But there’s a catch.

Once spring comes, I’ll shift my runs back to before breakfast. That means my “charge while eating” system may no longer guarantee enough power to get me through a full run—or a mowing session. Future-me would be very annoyed to discover a dying headset at kilometer three.

So, I need a new plan.

Right now, I’m leaning toward setting an 8:00 p.m. reminder on my phone to plug in the headset. That gives it about an hour to reach a full charge before I get ready for bed around 9. Later this week, I’ll run a little experiment: fully charge it by 9 p.m., then see if that charge comfortably lasts the 12 hours until I’m done with my morning run or yard work.

It’s a small thing, but having these pieces in place—soup simmering, anniversary plans mapped out, and a charging schedule for my headset—makes the week feel a little more under control.

Cold days are easier to face when the soup is hot, and the logistics are quietly cooperating.

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The Mysterious Case of My Monday Weight That Didn’t Move

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

After my run today, I stepped on the scale expecting the usual Monday plot twist—only to find that my weight and body composition hadn’t changed since Saturday. This was deeply suspicious.

For the past several weeks, Monday has reliably been my heaviest day of the week. I’ve learned not to take it personally. I usually blame the weekend—and more specifically, pizza. Delicious, sourdough-based, entirely worth it pizza.

My kidneys, however, do not behave like those of a perfectly cooperative adult. Depending on what I eat, my body becomes very enthusiastic about holding onto water. Most days, we eat healthy, homemade meals. Pizza is strictly a once-a-week luxury. Still, every Sunday I make sure pizza happens. Every Monday, my weight usually responds accordingly—thanks to a combination of glycogen storage and water retention.

So today’s unchanged number was unexpected.

I generally try not to obsess over my weight. It can swing by a few pounds easily, and I’ve learned not to panic. This past weekend, I ate exactly as I usually do. My exercise routine was also mostly unchanged—except for a peaceful three-kilometer walk with my wife on Sunday. The weather was lovely, and she wanted some sunshine. I wouldn’t expect that walk to single-handedly rewrite my Monday numbers, but I can’t think of any other explanation either.

I track my weight alongside my other biometrics because my nephrologist uses these trends to monitor my overall health. When we meet, he checks for sudden changes in weight, blood pressure, or heart rate. His rule of thumb is simple: sharp shifts usually mean something is going on inside the body.

Since I’m less active now than I was in the summer, I actually expected maintaining my weight to become easier. But because I move less in winter, I’ve also cut back on snacks. With kidney disease, almost everything seems to contain something I’m supposed to limit—phosphate, sugar, potassium, salt. Sometimes avoiding food altogether feels like the safest strategy.

Because my weight usually fluctuates more than this, today’s stability caught me off guard. At the same time, it means I need to be more careful this week. Starting lower than usual raises the risk of losing muscle too quickly—and that’s something my doctor very much does not want.

So for now, I’ll watch the numbers, eat carefully, move thoughtfully, and let the scale do its strange little science experiment in peace.

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Early Wake-Ups, Asian Groceries, and a Very Organized Saturday

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

Today’s plan was simple: visit the Asian grocery store and then pick up flea medication for our kitten on the way home. Both places open at 8:00 a.m., which left me with that uniquely uncomfortable block of time between my normal wake-up time and when departure is actually allowed. It is because I have a long list of a Saturday morning routine.

I usually wake around 7 a.m. I need more sleep than my wife—about 7.5 to 8 hours—thanks to a brain injury that politely requires extra rest. One doctor told me I’d need it. An occupational therapist told me to keep a consistent schedule. So now I live in a delicate alliance with both science and my alarm clock.

My wife, on the other hand, operates like a Swiss watch. Saturdays do not alter her internal firmware. She wakes up roughly two hours earlier than I do, workday or not. She says it’s because her brain works best when her schedule is regulated. I believe her. I also fear her efficiency.

This left me with too much time to do nothing… but not quite enough time to comfortably start my usual full Saturday morning routine.

Fortunately, my wife, our kitten, and my bladder formed a secret alliance and woke me up an hour early. I briefly considered going back to sleep. Then I remembered that future-me would be grateful if present-me used the bonus hour wisely. So I stayed up.

Our kitten, as always, was thrilled. She waits patiently on the bed every morning until I open my eyes—sometimes even dragging her beloved toy mouse with her. I’ve been hiding that toy before bedtime because otherwise she launches nighttime solo parkour sessions and loses it somewhere in the house. This morning, she didn’t need the toy. She already had me. Her happiness upon my awakening was… overwhelming.

I fed the kitten, poured my cereal, completed my texting and language-app practice, and even finished my morning exercises. And just like that, I had less than thirty minutes before departure—perfect timing to work on this post.

It turns out doing part of my routine before the grocery run is surprisingly satisfying. That’s one less task waiting for me when I return home.

So thanks to Artemis, my wife, and my kidneys, my day already feels strangely coordinated.

Once we return, I’ll prep for my weekly 10K run, cook supper, and then head out again for our regular grocery trip. I sincerely hope my wife’s perfectly structured day forgives the extra logistics.

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Three Bags of Leaves and the Stubborn Tree That Won’t Quit

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

I scheduled today as an official Leaf Day. The morning was cool, but the forecast promised warmth later, which meant it was finally safe to commit to the mission. With determination (and mild dread), I headed outside to clear our lawn of fallen leaves.

Recent windy days had turned our trees into enthusiastic confetti machines. Naturally, every single leaf seemed to land in our front yard. We try to keep things tidy, but I skipped this chore on Tuesday—and leaves, like unread emails, multiply when ignored. Some of our neighbors let their yards turn into a brown carpet museum, but we live under the cheerful supervision of an HOA, where “neatly maintained” is not a suggestion but a lifestyle.

I confidently assumed this would be a one-bag job.

It was not.

One bag became two. Two became three. At that point, I began to question both my math skills and my life choices. I had cleared the yard just last week, so the sheer volume of leaves felt borderline disrespectful. It took a few solid hours to finish, but thankfully, it was still nowhere near the level of suffering known as summer lawn mowing.

Despite the surprise workload, the chore was strangely satisfying. With every pass of the leaf vacuum, the front yard visibly transformed from “abandoned forest floor” to “suburban responsibility.” After emptying the third bag, I finally stopped—mostly because my motivation had also reached full capacity. The yard looked noticeably neater, and I felt just proud enough to justify a future complaint about it.

For reasons known only to nature, the tree in our front yard still hasn’t finished shedding its leaves, while the neighbor’s tree is nearly bald. An arborist once told us our tree is weakened by its much larger neighbor and suggested we remove it. That suggestion was immediately vetoed by my wife, who has a deep sentimental attachment to trees.

A few years ago, we had to remove a massive tree behind our house because it was threatening the structure itself. It was so tall that owls used to visit it at night—often waking my wife around 2 a.m. with dramatic hooting. Even our kitten loved leaping from branch to branch. Cutting that tree was emotionally difficult, which is why the front-yard tree still stands today… heroically dropping leaves every autumn.

I powered through the task and completed it to my own satisfaction. Living at the bottom of a hill means we naturally collect more than our fair share of wind-blown leaves—especially near the storm gutter, which today was completely buried under a dense mat of leafy ambition.

Three bags. One stubborn tree. Zero regrets.
Well… maybe mild regret.
But the yard is clean.

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