Pre-Burning Jewish Christmas Calories (or Holiday Workouts)

This past week of workout were intense! That’s good because I had a nice splurge on Christmas, but it was not easy getting through the week!

Monday and Wednesday both were Christmas themed workouts (since those were in the days leading up to Christmas). They reminded me a lot of Hell Week during Halloween and were pretty much as tough as those workouts were.

Monday’s theme was the 12 Days Of Christmas. We had a list of 12 cardio tasks and a list of 12 strength tasks. This was the cardio list.

It went 100 meter row, 2 minute push, 3 squat curls, and so on. You worked your way down the list and if you were able to complete it, you worked your way back up.

The first few things on the list weren’t too bad. It was a nice way to ease into the workout. At 7 (or the 700 meter row) I was starting to get exhausted. I slowed my rowing down to try to keep my form nice and it seemed like that row took forever! I did make it to the 1200 meter row, but I only completed about 300 meters of it before it was time to switch to the strength portion.

This was also a list of 12 tasks, but you went through the tasks like the 12 Days of Christmas song. I don’t remember all 12 tasks but the first few were 1 full burpee, 2 squat jumps, 3 push-ups, and 4 pop jacks. But instead of working down the list like we did for cardio you started with 1 burpee; then 2 squat jumps and 1 burpee; then 3 push-ups, 2 squat jumps, and 1 burpee.

Holy moly was that tough! I think I made it to 10 on that list before time was called. The last task of the day was the Monday Challenge. I saw a sneak peek at the challenge on Instagram and new ahead of time that is was going to be a 100 meter row. I didn’t have a previous record saved in my phone for a 100 meter row, but I did have a 1 minute record of 313 meters. So I set it in my head that I wanted to do better than 20 seconds. And I managed to do it in 19.5 seconds, so I was pretty darn happy with myself!

Wednesday’s workout was Christmas Eve so I tried to dress festively.

Sadly, that little Santa hat that I’m wearing broke right before I took the picture. It was attached to a headband that snapped in half when I tried to wear it. Oh well.

The theme on Wednesday was Naughty or Nice. There were 2 stockings in the room, one for cardio and one for strength. When you did the cardio section, you pulled a card from the stocking and it told you what to do. After completing that task 3 times, you pulled a new card. There were Nice cards that were short exercises and there were Naughty cards (like having to do a 5K on the treadmill or rowing machine). I was lucky and only pulled Nice cards during cardio. It was essentially run/row workouts. The first card was .13 mile run (really a walk for me) and then 400 meters on the rowing machine. My second card was a 1 minute all-out pace on the treadmill followed by a 1 minute row. I just got through those 2 cards when time was called.

For the strength section, we all had the same exercises to do. But the cards would tell us how many reps we had to do of each workout. I pulled 2 Nice cards and 1 Naughty card. In the end, I did about 80 reps of each workout.

On Friday, I was a bit tired and feeling the effects of my Chinese food, but I was ready to burn off all that junk in my system. The cardio portion was all treadmill and the strength portion was a mixture of body weight, strap work, rowing, and abs. I was doing ok until the abs portion. I’m really losing flexibility in my hips (this is actually really worrying me and will be something I discuss when I interview potential new hip surgeons), and the lack of flexibility makes sit-ups and crunches really tough to do. I can’t really have my feet flat on the floor and bring my upper body to my legs. The pain in my hips is too intense. So most of the time, I either do crunches where I don’t bring my upper body up as much or have my legs straight out in front of me.

Doing full body sit-ups with your legs straight ahead of you is not easy to do, and my Friday coach Whitney saw that I was struggling and in a lot of pain. So she came over and held my legs down so I could successfully complete my sit-ups.

It’s the little touches like that where you can really see that the coaches at Orangetheory care about you and want to see you succeed that makes me so happy that I found my workout home.

I only did 3 workouts this week. My body probably could not have taken a 4th workout this time. But with the New Year almost here I’ve got some goals set in my head that will make the 4th workout more of a regular thing.

But it’s not time for me to share my 2015 goals quite yet. That’s coming up in a few days.

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Back To 4 Workouts (or More Rowing!) Doing Some Challenges (or Mondays Are Going To Be Tough) Getting My Rowing In (or Burning Lots Of Calories) Pre-Burning Thanksgiving Calories (or Working Out In LA and San Diego) Some Holiday Workouts (or Back On The Treadmill This Week) 12 Days Of Christmas Workouts (or This Feels A Lot Like Hell Week)