This past week was the start of Hell Week. I do love the different challenges that Orangetheory has throughout the year and Hell Week is one of my favorites. Hell Week has harder than normal workouts, but if you complete a specific number of them, you earn a shirt. I know it seems silly to be excited about a shirt, but it’s about the bragging rights more than anything. This year, you had to do 4 out of the 8 workouts to earn your shirt. And if you do all 8, you earn a gym bag as well. I knew I couldn’t do all 8 workouts, but I was excited to get my workouts in and earn my shirt this year. And since Hell Week started on a Monday, I was able to get in all 4 workouts required for the shirt in the first 4 days! I had the added challenge during the week with dealing with pain and nausea, but I think it was better this past week than it was the week before.
Monday’s workout was called Group Project and it was a bit of a partner workout. It wasn’t a traditional partner workout because the switches were done as a class and you weren’t waiting on your partners to finish something, but the 3 of us in my group still worked together on the workout.
For cardio, you ran or biked for distance until the last 30-seconds of each block when you had an all-out. But you didn’t know how long you’d be in that block, so you had to pace yourself without knowing how long you had to go for. You had a bit of an idea because the timing correlated to the rowing, but it was still something that only the coach knew.
On the rower, each time someone in the group was on the rower they had a different distance. It started with the first partner doing a 200-meter row and then they held a squat until it was time to switch. Some people finished the row and some people didn’t. The next partner had a 300-meter row and a squat hold, and that pattern of increasing the row by 100-meters continued until one partner had a 700-meter row and a squat hold. After that row, the rows decreased by 100-meters each time.
And on the floor, we had the same exercises every time we were on the floor and you picked up where you left off after the last block. We had pull-ups on the straps, plank shoulder taps, upright rows using weights, and lunges. I felt like the only place I could get a bit of a break was on the floor since we were constantly moving around. But it was a good challenge to always be changing what we were doing and I really enjoyed the opening workout of Hell Week.
Tuesday’s workout was called The Distance Directive and it was all about challenging yourself with the distance you could do for cardio and on the rower.
For cardio, the first block was a 6-minute distance challenge where we started at a high incline/resistance level and the incline/resistance went down every 90-seconds. I started higher than I normally am for my all-out to keep it challenging. And after that challenge, we had a 30-second all-out without incline. We were supposed to remember our distance so we could try to beat it in the second block. The second block had rounds of a 1-minute all-out with a 30-second recovery. And each all-out increased in incline/resistance level to match what we had done in the first block. Doing an all-out at really high resistance levels was so tough and I struggled to get my distance up there. But I managed to do the exact same distance in the first and second blocks so I was very happy with that.
On the rower, we started with 4 rounds of a 1-minute all-out row with a 30-second rest after each row. We ended that block with a 30-second all-out. Again, we were supposed to remember our distance to try to beat it in the second block. The second block started with doing half the distance we did in the first block. Then we had lunges to hops to get done before trying to do the second half of the distance from the first block. I just came short of getting to that distance the second time, but I’m happy with how close I got.
On the floor, each block had a buy-in and buy-out exercise to start and end the block. In the first block, we had hop overs and in the second block, we had lateral lunges. Then for each block, we had 3 exercises to do and we had a range of reps to go for so we could test out different weights. The first block had tricep extensions, chest presses, and knee tucks. And the second block had bicep curls, reverse grip low rows, and high plank knee tucks. I was feeling a lot better this day compared to Monday, so I was able to do a bit better with the workout. But I didn’t change up the weights I used on the floor, which I do regret a little bit. I could have tried harder, but I was worried about pushing myself too much.
Wednesday’s workout was called To Hell Or High Wattage, and I think this was the hardest workout of the entire week. We had a coach in class with us for this workout and that coach as well as the one who was coaching the class agreed that this was very hard and possibly the hardest workout for all of Hell Week.
For cardio, we were self-timed for the entire workout. We started with a .25-mile (or 1-mile for me on the bike) push into a 30-second all-out. Then we had pulsing half squats. We repeated the pattern of the 30-second all-out and pulsing half squats 2 more times before doing another .25-mile/1 mile distance and we repeated the pattern again with doing the distance and then 3 rounds of a 30-second all-out with pulsing half squats. It didn’t sound hard when we were being told what the workout would be, but doing it was another thing. The half squats definitely got to me and I knew I would be sore later.
On the rower, we had a lot of timed work. We started with a 75-second push row into a 30-second all-out row. The second block had 3 rounds of a 30-second all-out row with only 15-seconds to recover between each row. The third block had a 2-minute push row into a 30-second all-out row. The fourth block had 4 rounds of a 30-second all-out row with 15-seconds to recover. And the last block was a 2 1/2-minute push row with a 30-second all-out. That was a lot of rowing and very little rest. And I know that rowing has been a weak point for me lately so that made this even more challenging. I was exhausted after the row blocks, and I still had the floor do to.
On the floor, we had some blocks that were timed with the rowers and some that were at our own pace. For blocks 1, 3, and 5; we paced ourselves with the exercises. We had single-leg squats (which I did as regular squats) and rollouts using the straps. The rollouts were extra tough because I had gotten my flu shot the day before, so I was a bit sore. But I’m glad that I was only sore and didn’t feel worse. In blocks 2 and 4, we had exercises during the 30-second intervals and rest in the 15-second intervals. All the exercises were single-arm snatches, but sometimes we focused on one side for the entire 30-seconds and then switched sides when it was the next interval, and other times we had alternating sides during the 30-seconds so you had to put the weight down on the ground to switch hands. When we had the alternating ones, I know I did deeper squats to get the weight on the ground, and that added to the soreness I was already feeling.
I was very sore on Thursday. I knew that I would probably feel that way since I was doing 4 Hell Week classes in a row. But I was excited to earn my shirt in that workout. This workout was called Switch The Core Concept, and I’m glad that it was a bit easier on my legs so I didn’t hurt more.
For cardio, we started with a 1-minute push pace into a 30-second all-out. Then for the rest of the workout, we had 30-second all-outs and recoveries. I believe it was a total of 12 all-outs, but I honestly lost count. We started with having a 1-minute recovery and after a few rounds, it decreased to 45-second recoveries. And I believe the last 6 all-outs only had 30-second recoveries. It was a lot to do and not a lot of time to recover during the entire block. I kept my resistance levels the way I normally have them, but I know I didn’t pedal as fast as I normally would.
On the rower, we had an interesting challenge. We set our rowers for a 2000-meter row and the goal was to get as much of it done as possible. We started timed with cardio with a 1-minute push row to a 30-second all-out row. Then we had overhead presses and front presses with the medicine ball. When we were on the rower, we started with rounds of 30-second all-out rows with the medicine ball exercises between each row. After a few minutes, we had 45-second all-out rows with a decreased number of reps for the exercises. And for the last few minutes, we had 1-minute all-out rows with even fewer reps of the medicine ball exercises. I knew I wouldn’t get 2000-meters done, but I was hoping to get at least 1500-meters completed at the end of the block, and I did just over that. I was so happy that I saw I only had 500-meters left of the 2000-meters when there were about 5 seconds left in the block.
And on the floor, it was all core work, as you could guess from the name of the workout. It was one long block and it was a lot. We had plank low rows, weighted crunches, bicycle presses, weighted v-ups, plank pull-throughs, and weighted hip bridges. I had to go a bit lighter for some of the weights because of how sore my legs were. But I’m glad that I didn’t have to do more squats after Wednesday’s workout. I rested when I had to on the floor, but I tried to limit it since I knew that this would be my last workout for the week.
After doing 4 Hell Week workouts in a row, I totally earned my shirt. Unfortunately, the shirts I’ve earned don’t fit me but I still collect them because maybe one day I will fit in them. I lost my first Hell Week shirt, so I only have 8 or the 9 that I have earned. But I still think it’s a very impressive collection.
Even though I have completed the Hell Week challenge, I will still have one more Hell Week workout since Halloween is today. And I’m hoping that I do just as well with that workout as I did this past week to finish out a fun but tough OTF challenge!
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