Fitness this week, #7 2026

I had some rough days and wasn't up to anything last week. It was nothing in particular, just... me and my own bullshit.
In reality, last week was good. I continued lifting the heavy weights and most of it was successful. Some very tough exercises were more manageable. I was challenged to increase the range of motion with the heavy chest press, and there's no reason to chicken out when you have a spotter. I didn't die, and did much better than I thought I would. But that, along with another exercise I felt I chickened out with, made me realise how much I still lack confidence and how much I still don't trust my body, and I was heavily disappointed with myself and was upset and miserable most of last weekend. Of course I overreacted but that's how my mind works sometimes.

After getting back to the gym this Monday I've been feeling better, and on Tuesday something happened that made me completely forget about my own bullshit. This has been a decent week, and spring is here! My roses in front of the house are getting a lot of new leaves (see top photo), birds are singing and there's generally a nice spring feel outside.

Monday - heel raises, jumping & gym

I kicked off the week with three sets single leg heel raises and 50 pogo hops.
It was a messy day - we were taking Elsa to the vet for her second round of vaccines, and we also had a planned power cut. The thing was - my husband thought the power cut was on Tuesday but realised it was today and we had zero plan for lunch. Luckily we had some prepared chicken fillets so we ate that cold with bread. Not the fanciest lunch but at least something!

After Elsa's shots I went to the gym. It was a quite good session. I didn't feel ready with the heavy weights yet, but ok then. I did squats, lunges, barbell chest press, inclined flyes, one-dumbbell pullovers, dumbbell row, lateral raise and upright row. No weights were changed since a few weeks ago and that was probably a good thing considering my performance dip I had before I moved on to the heavier weights program. Now I felt quite good.

Tuesday - walking, 4 km

Spring is here! It was the first day of truly good weather since I don't know when, and planned a walk but it was cold, only 2 degrees in the morning. I waited a few hours until the thermometer showed 6C. After a few disappointments I prefer to overdress a bit, and now always wear a Stormtech-type jacket and headband no matter how nice the weather looks. And I needed that, there was an awful headwind on the way back. But it was still refreshing to get out.

We received some potentially very bad news about a family member and I was abruptly awakened from whatever personal crisis I've been having. Other people's misery doesn't magically solve our own problems, but gives an important perspective. Life is short and we don't know what's around the corner. Enjoy this moment because that's all we know that we have. Do the thing you want to do and enjoy the process. Go after the goals you have and don't wait. Do things for fun. Go all in with what's meaningful to you. More than anything else, don't waste time being miserable for no real reason.

This completely changed my attitude about everything.

Wednesday - heel raises, jumping and gym

I kicked off the day with single leg heel raises and 50 sideways pogo hops. Then I had work, and later the gym. I did reverse lunges, sumo squats, parachutes, barbell row, flyes, inclined dumbbell chest press, lateral raises and barbell shoulder presses. Particularly the sumo squats felt great but after three glute-focused exercises, my sometimes angry hip/lower back muscle was upset and didn't want to do barbell rows. I did them anyway but the first set wasn't great. After that settled, everything else was good. The barbell shoulder press went really well for 12 reps!

Thursday - rest

I took the day off (except from work).

Friday - gym

Today was another decent session except I got out of breath a bit too early. My trainer said I've seemed tired for the last two weeks and ordered me to rest over the weekend. Sometimes he notices things I just see as "it's an effect of increased rep range" or even "maybe I didn't do my best".
I have periods like that. I get run down. It can be anything from (or a combination of) that time of the month (male trainers don't always think of that possibility), less than ideal sleep (which happened this week), my recent mood dips, it's the end of a long grey winter with almost zero outdoor time, and I think I still may be eating too little. I track everything I eat and will continue doing that until the 30th when my app subscription expires, and sometimes I'm surprised about the low calorie count. It's always a rough estimate despite what apps say, I don't include every single drop of olive oil, each egg is different and every packet of cheese is probably different. But I still think I may be eating less than I should considering the intensity of my training. That of course affects gains too which is not what I want!

I also came to think of another factor - last summer I started taking electrolytes to the gym and noticed a big difference in performance and energy. Then I stopped taking them because of some studies that electrolytes aren't really needed (or are they?), I don't want to risk taking too much sodium, and in the winter I don't sweat much anyway. But - science also says it doesn't matter when you take your creatine but I still think it makes a difference if I take it just before the gym. Other than making a different food plan, I'll try electrolytes again next week because who knows?

Saturday - a lovely walk

Perhaps today's activities weren't what my trainer meant with rest, but here we go. The weather was gorgeous and I wanted to go outdoors. It was sunny, in the neighbourhood of 10C, and everything seemed so spring-like.

When I left, there was an annoying cold wind but not bad enough to make me turn back. I went towards the pier, took some photos and then went back, almost 7 km in total. It was nice and colourful down there and along the way, the wind stopped too.

In the evening we had our monthly gig... this one isn't always great but tonight was really enjoyable.

Sunday - rest

After a late night yesterday, today I'm resting so that I'll hopefully be in good form for the gym tomorrow. I'm watching flight disasters on YouTube (more relaxing than you might think!) and trying to adjust colour settings on my screens (not as relaxing). I have two laptops and two separate screens which means four screens (or three, since I basically never use my Mac outside my office anymore) and they don't play by the same rules! This makes photo editing hard because I never know if photos will look correct on other screens and I haven't been able to calibrate especially my primary screen properly. For now I try to adjust settings so that they all have somewhat the same colours as my iPad or phone screen, which is what most people use to see my digital photos. For print it's a totally different story.

So this week was very mixed and with a lot of bumps. For now the best thing is to go with the flow, enjoy the good things I have in front of me, and try to optimise myself with whatever tweaks I need to do with nutrition, sleep and attitude.

Thanks to Kim and Deborah for hosting the Weekly rundown!