This post is to primarily update my progress with planking.
Two days ago I managed to achieve a plank of nine minutes and 10 seconds. Yesterday I stopped at eight minutes and 40 seconds. And today, I again crept over nine minutes by at least three seconds.
My effort today was around 3:30 a.m., and I had not yet slept. I had gotten to bed ahead of 10:00 p.m., but sleep would not come ─ Summer heat was partly to blame.
I remained abed because I wanted nothing to do with my drunken younger brother who was downstairs watching T.V., and so it became a game of waiting for him to finally retire to his bedroom.
This is often around midnight, but fortunately last night he may have performed that retreat around 11:30 p.m. and thereby freed me from my very uncomfortable voluntary seclusion. By then, I was no longer in bed; rather, I had dressed and was lying atop it, just biding time.
Once my brother had secluded himself into his own bedroom, I was fast here at my computer to tackle the day's content assignment for the post I am nearly finished at one of my six hosted websites.
My youngest stepson was still up.
As for my wife, she didn't arrive home until an hour or two into the a.m. It is not too often that she will come directly home following her long workday at her friend's Thai restaurant. Too often, she involves herself in some drinking and partying, and maybe even a nearby casino ─ I think that she has fed that beast a score and a half or even more thousand dollars since last October.
I am impotent to do aught about it, even though she has me buried in credit debt. I do not drive, so I am mainly housebound. And at the age of 69, I do not have the walking expertise that I once enjoyed.
My 70th birthday will arrive in October; and barring a financial miracle, I have no plans to reach the age of 71. My retirement life is no longer worth the living.
Anyway, my wife didn't waste too very much time before she got herself to bed ─ I think she prepared herself a small meal and ate that, and of course had some communication with her youngest son.
He was still up and at his computer in the boys' den area downstairs when I went downstairs to the darkened living room to perform that plank.
By then I was nearly done my work on the website post; so once the plank was over with, I completed the post assignment and then donned a jacket and went outside to water most of the front yard garden areas.
I was back into my bed comfortably ahead of 4:00 a.m.
However, my morning was to commence around 8:00 a.m., for at that point I found myself once more contrarily awake despite my inadequate sleep.
But returning to my planking, I am curious just how unusual it is to be performing the exercise for as long as I am now doing.
The two areas of me that are most stressed are my elbows, and also my abdomen. The strain to my stomach wall is in fact very pronounced during the final few minutes, and it causes me a little concern.
You see, about 20 years ago, I sustained a hernia of my abdominal wall just a couple or so inches above my navel (in terms of travelling up toward my head).
I incurred it while exercising.
And so when I am planking, and when the overall abdominal 'burn' sets in, I feel that I must tense my abdomen as firmly as I am able in order to not allow a recurrence at the site of that injury.
Sustaining such tension is no easy matter ─ image bracing your stomach in order to take someone's punch...but holding that brace a few minutes. It cannot be done ─ only for varying stretches of time. And when the tension is briefly relaxed, I am given cause to wonder if harm is being wreaked, rather than the toning benefit the exercise is supposed to bestow.
But perhaps I am imagining more into this than is merited?
I would like to mention one other experience I have been having ─ this has cropped up within perhaps the past week.
There develops a peculiar...sensation...in my left breast area fairly close to the oxter or axilla (i.e., armpit).
This is not something I experience during planking ─ the sensation has been presenting at times over the course of each day when I am perfectly relaxed.
It feels like it may be a physical symptom of my ongoing mental / emotional tension or stress, but I find it peculiar that it has only begun to manifest since I have been planking for as long as I have been doing.
Of course I am hoping that it is nothing more than some inner muscular twitching that is unrelated to the state of my heart, for it feels rather deep in origin.
It is not at all painful ─ only peculiar and uncommon. But so can be symptoms of pending heart attack, I suppose.
And one further development worth a mention.
I found myself nearly delighted on Tuesday when ─ prior to going out to the backyard toolshed to do some exercising, and while I was dressed in cutoffs and a pair of runners ─ I weighed myself and found that I was around 184 pounds at most.
Yesterday while similarly dressed, I was around 185 pounds at most.
For many, many months I have been weighing well into the upper 180s or even the low 190s, so these two low registries were most welcome ─ and especially so since some of the exercising I would be doing in that shed involve chin-ups / pull-ups.
In height, I suppose that I should mention that I am something over five feet and 10 inches (or 178 centimetres) ─ this may help put my weight into a clearer context.
A word now on today's weather ─ it has been overcast. I have seen no sunshine breaking through. Yet the past few days have been very sunny and hot, and I had no idea that today's change was in store.
Sleeping should be more easily accomplished at bedtime tonight!
By the way, my wife did rise on her own this morning around 10:15 a.m. to ready for her workday and the drive to get to the restaurant ─ her usual start time there is 11:00 a.m.
It will surprise me if she returns home any earlier than Sunday afternoon, for she tends to spend her weekends somewhere in Vancouver ─ such is my sorry marriage.
Also, my eldest stepson did not go to work today, for whatever reason.
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