Back Into The Game

After a ten month hia­tus, I’m back into my reg­u­lar table ten­nis rou­tine again. I start­ed out extreme­ly rusty, feel­ing as if I was learn­ing how to play again, but now I’m almost at the lev­el that I end­ed with. It feels like it’s advan­ta­geous to take a step back from play­ing so that I can for­get all my bad habits while remem­ber­ing all the the­o­ry, because I can tell exact­ly what I need to change to improve now. I wish I could say the same for my golf game when I get out on the cours­es every spring.

My bout with gas­troen­teri­tis left me with a small­er appetite and ema­ci­at­ed frame. The sud­den weight loss — bring­ing my weight pre­car­i­ous­ly close to 100 lbs. — has been rather notice­able; my sweaters are bag­gy, my rings slip off my fin­gers, and I’ve lost two notch­es on my belt. Most peo­ple strug­gle to lose weight, I strug­gle to gain it and stay above 120. Table ten­nis is one of the best things I can do to fix this. After every ses­sion, I’m rav­en­ous­ly hun­gry, and this usu­al­ly con­tin­ues through to the day after.

Table ten­nis is also one of the only sports that I enjoy enough to not have to drag my ass out every time, which is def­i­nite­ly an advan­tage when the venue is an hour away. Unfortunately, my sched­ule on Tuesdays and Thursdays now con­sists of:

  1. wak­ing up at six thir­ty in the morn­ing
  2. going to work for eight and a half hours
  3. com­ing home and sleep­ing for half an hour
  4. eat­ing a din­ner which I’ve pre­pared ear­li­er in the week (with no time to cook)
  5. trav­el­ling to the gym
  6. play­ing for two hours
  7. trav­el­ling home
  8. show­er­ing and falling asleep by mid­night

There are no breaks in between, which means that I have to watch the clock dur­ing almost every­thing that I do. It’s a com­plete rush from start to fin­ish. The upside is that when I’m at the gym, work­ing on bet­ter short-ball con­trol, or try­ing to achieve a back­hand smash, I can for­get every­thing else, which is some­thing that does­n’t hap­pen for me eas­i­ly.

3 comments

  1. I had the same prob­lems too (stom­ach spasms, lack of appetite, weight-loss ‑dropped to 96lbs), though I attribute them to anx­i­ety over a lot of things. I do hope you over­come your strug­gle to gain weight.

    off top­ic: Having found your blog has inspired me to do a make-over of my own. Now it does­n’t exact­ly look like a clone of yours, but one can def­i­nite­ly see where I put the “inspi­ra­tion”. I hope you don’t mind.

  2. I don’t mind at all…I guess inspi­ra­tion can be found any­where.

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