Chapter 167 Smoking Impairs Lung Capacity

"Senior!"

"Senior Chen Jue!"

"Wake up!"

After what felt like a long time, Chen Jue heard someone calling him. He groggily opened his eyes. It was Ma Qiang, and beside him were a few other students from the swim team.

"Senior, are you okay?"

"It’s already dark outside! You’ll catch a cold sleeping here," Ma Qiang reminded him kindly.

Chen Jue was taken aback. He groggily propped himself up and looked out through the pool’s large floor-to-ceiling windows. Sure enough, the once-bright outdoors had become pitch-black.

’It’s dark? I actually slept for this long?’ Chen Jue was surprised. He jolted fully awake and quickly pulled out his phone to check the time.

He remembered it was not even 4 PM when he came out of the locker room, but he had somehow slept until past 6 PM.

This extreme fatigue was truly something else. It was the first time he’d ever trained to the point of passing out.

However, after more than two hours of Deep Sleep, Chen Jue felt some of his stamina return.

He opened his panel and took a look:

——————

[Name: Chen Jue]

[Strength: 1.68↓ (－0.05)]

[Constitution: 1.97↓ (－0.06)]

[Spirit: 1.27↓ (－0.02)]

[Skills: Omitted]

[Assignable Free Attributes: 0.04]

(Character Evaluation: Omitted)

(Warning: You are in a state of high fatigue. Your body’s functions are at a low point. Exercising in this state will significantly increase your risk of injury.)

——————

’From [Extreme] to [High]?’

’Fatigue has levels?’ Chen Jue muttered to himself, guessing this was a hidden feature from the panel’s last update.

Besides that, he noticed the red reduction values next to his Three-dimensional Attributes had decreased compared to before he slept, though they hadn’t completely disappeared.

Apparently, the two hours of Deep Sleep had a very good self-healing effect.

Getting up from the electric massage chair and stretching a bit, Chen Jue found that his entire body was incredibly sore. It was much more tiring than when he had pushed past his limits running, and the side effects were more severe.

Seeing this, Ma Qiang chuckled. "Senior Chen Jue, this is your first time training like this, so of course you’re sore! The energy consumption from high-intensity swimming is several times higher than aerobic exercises like running."

Chen Jue nodded in agreement. His previous routine training had never left him so exhausted that he would doze off on the spot.

"Aren’t you guys tired after swimming like this all the time?" Chen Jue asked subconsciously.

He had noticed that Ma Qiang and the other swim team students all looked full of energy after training, not at all weak and drained like him.

"Tired! Of course we’re tired!"

"But we’ve all been swimming since we were kids. After practicing for over a decade, we’re used to it," Ma Qiang explained as they walked and chatted on their way to the Jiang University cafeteria.

According to Ma Qiang, most professional swimmers like them were selected by coaches to join team training starting in kindergarten.

Some of these kindergarten prospects started practicing breaststroke in the pool before they were even weaned.

The older they got, the more time they spent in the water.

Take Ma Qiang’s current daily training, for instance. As long as they didn’t have classes, they had to be in the pool from morning to night, with daily training sessions lasting over 10 hours.

Compared to a nine-to-five office worker, an athlete’s life was much more arduous and monotonous. However, long-term swimming also better developed their stamina, endurance, and willpower.

This was Chen Jue’s first attempt at swimming training. It might have seemed like he was showing off in front of Ma Qiang and Coach Wang, but in reality, his physical endurance was still a long way from that of a professional swimmer.

’Being an athlete really is "one minute on stage, ten years of practice offstage."’

’Looks like I’ll have to work even harder!’ Chen Jue felt a small jolt of shock after hearing about Ma Qiang’s journey as an athlete.

The panel only accelerated his growth; it didn’t turn him into a superman overnight.

If he wanted to surpass them in their own specialized field, Chen Jue would have to put in even more sweat.

...

He ate a team meal with Ma Qiang and the others at the Jiang University cafeteria, and during the meal, he learned a lot of obscure facts about swimming from them.

For example, underwater swimming, which Chen Jue quite liked, wasn’t an Olympic event, but there were smaller competitions for professional athletes.

The techniques for underwater swimming are quite unique, and official competitions are divided into two categories: with equipment and without equipment.

The current world record for no-equipment underwater swimming was set by Russian athlete Natalia Molchanova at the 2021 AIDA World Individual Swimming Championships. She was able to swim a distance of 182 meters at the bottom of a 50-meter pool without taking a breath.

That such a massive lung capacity was achieved by a female athlete truly gave Chen Jue quite a shock.

As for domestic underwater swimmers, if they used weights, professional fins, and Hand Flippers, they could also swim over 200 meters in one breath.

Moreover, the posture for underwater swimming isn’t as intense as in regular competitive swimming. One must use the [long-stroke breaststroke pull] technique, which has smaller limb movements, to maintain a long, inertial glide underwater.

This is because any large movements underwater will accelerate the body’s oxygen consumption.

"Senior, if you really like underwater swimming, you could go get your lung capacity tested."

"Our university’s affiliated hospital has the equipment to test it," Ma Qiang kindly added, seeing how invested Chen Jue was in underwater swimming.

"A lung capacity test?" Chen Jue’s interest was piqued. After dinner, he sat and chatted with Ma Qiang for a while longer.

He learned from him that a very important metric in the selection criteria for swimmers is lung capacity.

Lung capacity refers to the amount of air one can exhale with maximum effort after a maximum inhalation, and it includes tidal volume, inspiratory reserve volume, and expiratory reserve volume.

A healthy, average adult has a lung capacity of around 3,000 milliliters, while someone who exercises regularly can increase it to 5,000 milliliters.

Among all athletes, however, swimmers tend to have the largest lung capacity. For fairly outstanding athletes like Ma Qiang, who is a national-level swimmer, the standard to pass the physical test is a lung capacity of over 7,000 milliliters.

As for top-tier world-class athletes, like the exceptionally talented Phelps and Mu Xiangxiong, their lung capacity can even exceed 15,000 milliliters—almost four to five times that of an average person.

"The difference is that huge!"

"No wonder I was so tired after swimming. The amount of oxygen I’m taking in can’t even compare to you professionals," Chen Jue said with an amazed look after hearing these figures.

Compared to an average person, his lung capacity as a heavy smoker with a 10-year habit was clearly much worse.

It was only thanks to the recent surge in his [Constitution] Attribute that he was able to complete the two-hour high-intensity swimming workout.

...

After dinner, Chen Jue felt some of his stamina had returned.

He said goodbye to Ma Qiang and the others, then slowly walked out of the Jiang University campus with his weighted backpack.

Instead of walking back to his apartment, he temporarily stored his backpack in the security office. Just a moment ago, during a break in their meal, he had received a coded message from Jiang Zhe: "Dog? (shiba inu emoji)"

"Dog! (panting husky emoji)"

His body was aching after a full day of training, so Chen Jue was planning to find a place to relax anyway.

He took a taxi to the Jingtang Club and met up with Jiang Zhe in the open-air parking lot. He saw his friend pull a few tickets out of his pocket with a mysterious expression.

"You got them so fast!"

"As expected of my Second Bro, it’s my treat tonight!" Chen Jue snatched two tickets and glanced at them. They were indeed for that outdoor equestrian club, and a grin immediately spread across his face.

"Holy crap! Old Si, what do you need two tickets for?"

"I had a really hard time getting these. I was planning to give them to a few of my wife’s relatives..."

Jiang Zhe looked suspicious at first, but then he glanced at Chen Jue’s drained appearance and let out an "Oho~" as if he’d discovered a new continent.

"What the hell! Old Si, are you dating someone?" Jiang Zhe’s voice rose a few pitches.

"It’s not official yet. I’m taking her out to meet you guys on Saturday," Chen Jue said with a wave of his hand, storing the tickets in the car’s glove compartment.

Upon learning that Chen Jue had actually found a date, Jiang Zhe’s gossiping soul began to burn fiercely. His mouth fired off questions like a machine gun.

Where is she from?

Is she pretty?

How old is she?

What does she do for a living?

In short, it was an interrogation as severe as a household registration check, making Chen Jue roll his eyes for a good while.

The long-windedness of a married man was no less than that of the old uncles and aunties who formed the village’s intelligence network.

"You’ll meet her on Saturday, why ask so many questions!"

"Ask again, and we’re going Dutch tonight."

Chen Jue uttered the most destructive words in any social relationship, which immediately made Jiang Zhe tactfully shut his mouth. He muttered under his breath, "Whoever pays is the boss!"

Then, with Jiang Zhe’s arm slung around his shoulders, the two slipped into the Jingtang Club.

...

Since he had just finished swimming that afternoon and had spent a long time in the pool, Chen Jue skipped the hydrotherapy this time at the Jingtang Club.

Instead, he ordered a full-body massage from a male masseur, then went into the sauna for a steam session, planning to sweat out some of the accumulated dampness from his body.

The effect was surprisingly good. After an hour-long massage, the [High Fatigue] on his panel dropped to [Moderate Fatigue], and the reduction values of his Three-dimensional Attributes were halved.

To press his advantage, Chen Jue once again went all-in, dumping his recently accumulated free attribute points into [Constitution]. Relying on the panel’s powerful recovery ability, he directly weakened the [Moderate Fatigue] debuff further into [Mild Fatigue].

When he walked out of the Jingtang Club’s entrance feeling refreshed, Chen Jue even deliberately refused the Chunghwa cigarette Jiang Zhe offered him.

"What the hell! Jue the Fourth, you found a girl and now you’re even quitting smoking?" Jiang Zhe looked shocked.

All six of them from their college dorm room were heavy smokers with more than ten years on the habit. To have a traitor deserting the ranks now was truly beyond Jiang Zhe’s expectations.

"Smoking is bad for your health. I’m planning to quit for good."

"Jiang the Second, you should smoke less too. You don’t want to affect your kid at home," Chen Jue said with a shrug.

After personally experiencing during his swimming training how smoking affects lung capacity and reduces physical function, Chen Jue became determined to completely break this bad habit.

After all, he had a date with Teacher Wu in a few days. How much would it ruin the atmosphere if he showed up with yellow teeth and smoker’s breath?

"Not even a Chunghwa? Old Si, you’ve really changed!"

"I should have noticed it sooner!"

"The only thing that can make a man put in the effort to desperately lose weight and get fit is a pretty girl," Jiang Zhe said, pulling out a cigarette for himself and lighting it. He shook his head and sighed repeatedly.

"As expected of our dorm’s Philosopher Dai!"

"I’m a bit hungry after the massage. Want to grab a late-night snack?" Chen Jue waved his hand, interrupting his friend’s moment of sagely reflection.

Because he had just finished allocating his points, Chen Jue’s stomach started to rumble.

The food he ate at the Jiang University cafeteria that evening had already been more or less digested after only two hours.

Apparently, allocating points to [Constitution] to recover from fatigue had caused an abnormal amount of energy consumption.

"Food! Your treat!"

"I’m gonna eat you out of house and home to soothe the pain in my heart from losing my best smoking buddy!" Jiang Zhe looked wistful. With no one to squat on the curb and smoke with him, he suddenly felt that even the Chunghwa in his hand had become a bit tasteless.