I was really worried that this past week of workouts was going to be really bad for me. It wasn’t a great week, but I’m surprised that it went much better than expected. I’m always prepared for the worst when I know I will be dealing with pain and nausea but it’s nice when it’s not close to what I was prepared for.
And I’m especially glad it wasn’t as bad as expected on Monday because my dad was with me for that workout! Pretty much whenever my parents are in LA, my dad tries to make it to a workout with me and I love that! And for this workout, it was a signature workout that I knew would be a challenge. This was the Catch Me If You Can workout, and while I’ve done it before, it’s something that is very tough and I have a lot of room for improvement in what I can do.
This was a 2 group class so our Catch Me If You Can challenge was 22 minutes long. The idea is that every minute or two there is a distance goal you are supposed to get to. If you are at that distance or further, you keep going. If you fall behind, you are caught. And if you are caught, the rest of the 22-minute block you have sprints on the rower and treadmill (or bike). I usually make it around the middle checkpoint and that’s exactly how far I got this time as well. It’s right when the distance from one checkpoint to another gets a lot further. For me, the distance would normally take me about 3-minutes to complete and we had 1-minute to do it. So I knew I would be caught. When I was on the rower doing my sprints, it was still tough with my foot hurting, but at least they were quick rows. And my dad kicked butt and made it really far in the challenge!
On the floor, we had 1 long block. It started with a 500-meter row and I shocked myself by being able to row the entire thing without a break. I regretted that later when my heel was hurting a lot, but in the moment I was really proud of myself. And then we had bicep curls to squats to shoulder presses, hip hinge reverse flies, planks with rotations, Y-raises on the straps, and knee tucks on the straps (which I did as knee tucks on the ab dolly).
And of course, we had to do a post-workout photo with Coach Tyler since that’s the tradition!
Wednesday’s workout was a power day. I was feeling a bit sicker than I had been on Monday, but it was still much less than I had expected. And as usual, when I’m feeling this way, I just try to do my best and do what I can.
For cardio, we had 3 blocks. The first two blocks were the same with a 1-minute push pace, 90-second base pace, and 1-minute all-out. The last block had 3 rounds of a 1-minute all-out followed by a 1-minute recovery. I did get the resistance level on the bike to my normal levels, I just was pedaling slower than I normally would so I think that was still pretty decent.
On the rower, we had 2 blocks. The first block was rounds of 100, 200, and 300-meter rows with medicine ball power jacks between each row. I did squats to shoulder presses instead of power jacks, but they were still tough. And we just repeated those distances with increasing the reps for the medicine ball exercise each round for that block. And the second block was timed with cardio with rounds of a 1-minute all-out row followed by a 1-minute recovery row. It’s hard to always do the recovery row when I would prefer to just take a break. But I tried my best to at least move a bit. And fortunately, by this workout, my foot was doing better so the rowing didn’t bother me as much.
And on the floor, we also had 2 blocks. The first block had bench sit-up to stands, deadlifts, hop overs (which I did as squats), and lateral lunges. And the second block had burpees to bicep curls and step-ups. The second block was really tough for me and I was getting a bit more nauseous. So I didn’t do the burpees and just did squats to bicep curls to count as my exercise that block.
Friday’s workout was an endurance day, and it was one of the toughest endurance days! The cardio work was tough, but the hardest thing was that the entire row block was one long crew row! When you do a crew row, you are supposed to be matching the speed and cadence of everyone else on the rower. And that’s tough for a few reasons.
For cardio, it was 14-minutes straight of push paces and base paces with an all-out at the end. The push paces varied between 30-seconds and 2-minutes, but the base paces were always a minute. And the goal was to never go below your base pace to recover. I wasn’t great at tracking how fast I was pedaling on the bike, but I never went below my base resistance level for the entire block.
For the crew row, because of how the rowers were set up and we were spaced out, we got split into a few different small crews. But we still had to stay in sync with the others in our group. The pace we were going was a bit faster than what I’m comfortable with, so I needed quite a few breaks to reset and get back with my group. Plus, rowing for 14-minutes is hard no matter what! I didn’t get to the distance goal we had, but I was closer than I would have expected.
And for the floor, we had 1 long block that was split into 2 mini-blocks. The first mini-block had rollouts on the straps, chest presses on the straps, and plank reaches. We had 3 rounds of that before moving onto the second mini-block with hip bridges, single-arm chest presses, and reach and rotates on the straps. We had 2 rounds of the second mini-block and then we were supposed to do the entire thing as one long block. I had just finished my second round on the second mini-block and was starting my rollouts again when the workout ended.
And Saturday’s workout was a strength day and I’m glad that I was no longer worried about how I would be feeling. I feel lucky I got through this week without what I normally experience and I really feel like I took advantage of that in each workout.
For cardio, we had 4 blocks that were all the same length. Every block had a push pace, a 1-minute base pace, a base pace at an incline, and a 1-minute all-out. We started with a longer push pace and a shorter base pace at an incline but the incline was the highest one. Each block, the push pace got shorter, the incline base pace got longer, and the incline got lower. It was a good challenge for me to work with the resistance levels a bit more and for the longer incline intervals, I really felt it.
For the floor, we had 2 blocks. For each block, we were supposed to do 2 rounds of the exercises, and then we had a 200-meter row. The first block had bird dog low rows, step-ups (which I did as lunges), and leg raises. And the second block had lateral lunges, shoulder presses, and tricep push-ups. And when I did my 200-meter row in each block, I got it back under a minute which was much better than any other rowing I did during this week.
I’m so happy this past week went as well as it did. I wasn’t expecting it to be this way, but I know I needed it. The past month has been tough for me with my workouts and I needed to feel more hopeful about how I was doing. And I got that this past week and I hope to continue to feel that way this week!
You Might Also Like
A Short Workout Week (or I Guess I’m Glad This Happened On A Bad Week)
A Badass Workout Week (or Better Than Expected)
Almost Having A Second Hell Week (or Just Pushing Through)
A Bad Workout Week For A Different Reason (or I Guess I Was Too Optimistic)
At Least I Was Prepared For A Bad Week (or Something Is Better Than Nothing)
My Short Workout Week (or 6 Years Of Family Workouts)
