Something rather small happened today.

I was doing my bicep curls with the dumbbell loaded with 1.75 kg at each end — 3.5 kg of plates altogether, plus the weight of the dumbbell itself.

And I realised they were too easy.

That was unexpected.

Only nine days ago, on 20 August, I had picked up the dumbbell for my first deliberate resistance exercise since being admitted to hospital with atrial flutter. That day I did two sets of five hammer curls with 1.75 kg at each end.

Five at a time was enough.

Three days later, I managed two sets of ten hammer curls and two sets of ten bicep curls at the same weight.

Today, 29 August, I was doing the bicep curls and something had changed.

The weight didn’t feel challenging enough any more.

So I said to Andrew: “Should we go up?”

And we did.

Trying 2.5 kg

We changed the plates so that the dumbbell had 2.5 kg at each end — 5 kg of plates in total, plus the dumbbell itself.

I wasn’t suddenly going to try doing everything at the heavier weight.

I tried five bicep curls.

And I could do them.

Five.

That’s all.

But those five felt rather significant.

Nine days earlier, simply picking up the dumbbell again had been the achievement. Today I had reached the point where the weight I restarted with was beginning to feel too easy.

I hadn’t planned a progression schedule. I hadn’t decided that 29 August was the day on which the weights needed to increase.

My body told me.

I was doing the exercise and realised there wasn’t enough resistance.

So we tried a little more.

A Rather Messy Record

My record of today’s exercise is not particularly elegant.

August’s carefully designed Strength & Health Log never really happened. After the hospital admission I stopped drawing up the daily pages and decided to leave them blank. The proper journal can begin again in September.

So today’s exercise is written rather untidily on a spare dotted page, complete with crossings-out and corrections.

It records:

Bicep curls: 2 × 10 with 1.75 kg at each end, followed by 1 × 5 with 2.5 kg at each end.

Hammer curls: 2 × 10 with 1.75 kg at each end.

Seated resistance-band rows: two sets of ten with the green band, followed by ten with the blue and ten with the red.

Bodyweight squats: five.

It isn’t an impressive-looking training plan.

It isn’t supposed to be.

It’s simply a record of what I did.

Nine Days

What interests me much more is the sequence.

On 20 August:

2 × 5 hammer curls at 1.75 kg each end.

On 23 August:

2 × 10 hammer curls and 2 × 10 bicep curls at 1.75 kg each end.

And on 29 August:

The 1.75 kg bicep curls felt too easy, so I tried five at 2.5 kg each end.

There is a temptation to look at numbers like these and turn them immediately into targets.

Five becomes ten. Ten becomes twenty. Then perhaps the weight goes up again.

I’m trying not to do that.

I have had quite enough recently of my body doing unexpected things.

For the moment, I’d rather pay attention to what it tells me.

Today it told me that 1.75 kg at each end wasn’t quite enough for those bicep curls any more.

So Andrew and I added some weight.

I did five.

Then I stopped.

The End of August

At the beginning of August, exercise disappeared completely.

I was in hospital. Then I was home recovering. My exercise journal remained blank.

For a while, that was exactly what it needed to be.

Now, at the other end of August, I am not back to where I was before hospital — and I don’t particularly need to be.

But I am moving again.

I am curling again.

I have added resistance-band rows.

I have done a few squats.

And today, for the first time since starting this little experiment with strength work, I picked up a weight because the previous one had become too easy.

September can still be the fresh start for the properly ruled Strength & Health Log.

But August gets one final entry.

The lighter weight became too easy.

I’ll take that.