"Hey Dude, Wait a Second There..."

Wouldn't you know it... as I'm making big plans to change up my fitness goals start seriously training for a strength competition, my body says "Hey Dude, wait a second there. I'm going to try to put a kink in your plans."

As a part of self monitoring, I perform basic pulmonary function testing twice a day.  Over the past few weeks my lung function has been slowly decreasing.  Not a whole lot, just over .2 liters. I haven't had any other symptoms of infection.  No fever or anything like that.  Usually this means that I'm building up a mucus ball in my lungs and I'll have to work at coughing it up.  Well nothing would come up.

Last week I started getting some nasal congestion so this week I got ahold of the clinic and went in for a quick exam and nasal swab.  Turns out I have a silly virus and inflammation from the virus affecting my lungs.  The virus isn't one that requires me to be admitted to the hospital for treatment (yeah), and they went back and forth on whether or not to perform a bronchoscopy and decided on not (another yeah). So right now I've just upped my Prednisone dose and will taper after a few days.  So long as my function testing results return to normal and I don't start showing signs of infection, this may be the only intervention I need this time.  That would be pretty cool

So what to do about my training plan?  Today is Day 1 of my new program.  I thought about holding off a day, or going lighter, or just doing a partial workout.  What I ended up doing was the workout as planned, just took longer in between sets to make sure I was well recovered.  The last couple of sets of kettlebell swings did seem a little heavy.  I'm not sure if that was due to it being the first time I have done deadlifts as part of my workout, or if it was due to the virus.  The deadlifts, pull up progressions and get ups all felt good and strong.

Tomorrow I'll ask my body what it wants to do.  I'll either take a rest day or move on to Day 2.  I've gotten pretty good at listening to my body, so we'll have to see what happens. Right now I'm looking forward to working on those snatches :)

A couple people have asked about my home spirometer. It is a Micro Direct Home Monitor.

I noticed that there is a Bluetooth model available. Ok all of you lung transplant teams and researchers. Here is the data collection device we've been asking for.