Even though I’m isolating at home, I’m not slacking off with my workouts. I know I’m not doing as much or as tough of workouts at home, but I am still maintaining my normal schedule with doing Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday workouts. And I am so grateful that Orangetheory is posting workouts every day on their YouTube channel so I can follow a workout plan. I know it’s not everything that I do when I am in the studio for the workout, but it’s still motivating me.
While I’m doing these OTF At Home workouts, I probably won’t be doing my usual recap posts on here. There’s not as much to share about what I am doing in my workouts because things are a bit more repetitive. I’m not able to do as much with challenging myself in my workouts. I am limited in what weights I can lift or what exercises I can do. I am finding ways to get cardio in with the cardio blocks they have in the videos online (I usually do those blocks twice since it’s the main cardio that I’m doing). But there are no rowing or biking challenges that I am able to do or have big breakthroughs with.
But I have been improving my home gym setup. It’s still limited because I don’t have unlimited money to spend on things and so many pieces of workout equipment are sold out everywhere. I would have loved to have gotten a set of dumbbells, but I couldn’t find any. But I think I did get a good variety now in my house so I can do some more weighted exercises.
I still have the water bottles I used before as light weights (but they are still a little too light). I have added a 12-pound medicine ball, which is heavier than I usually use at OTF, but I wanted a heavy one since I was going to use it for things I usually use dumbbells with. I also got a 20-pound weight bar (the tall thing next to my fan). That was the closest thing I could get to dumbbells, and this will be able to be used for a lot of arm exercises. It’s not easy to see in the photo, but next to the medicine ball I have some mini-bands. I figured that even if we didn’t have mini-band work in the workout videos, I could do some on my own. Plus, I could use them for upper body work. And in front of my new exercise equipment, I have some foam floor tiles because doing this work on a hard floor is uncomfortable. On top of those tiles is some shelf liner that helps the foam not slide on my floor when I’m using them.
Considering that I only had to figure out what to get about a week ago, I’m pretty happy with the things I got. They are good weights for me and will allow me to do quite a bit of variety in the workouts. It’s not a perfect home gym, but it’s significantly better than what I could do without them.
Things arrived throughout this past week so I haven’t used everything for all the workouts. The weight bar arrived late on Saturday, so that hasn’t been used at all. I used the medicine ball all week. And I was surprised to see that in the Friday video they did have mini-bands being used! Mine had arrived the day before, so I was able to use them for that workout and that made me really happy. It took me a few tries to figure out what mini-bands I should use for each exercise since these were a bit different from the ones at OTF. But I was able to do it and I definitely felt it in my workout.
Having the mini-bands when they used them in the Friday workout was fun, but I think my favorite workout of the week was on Saturday. I had 2 fun things happen with that workout. First, that workout was my 50th workout of 2020! I know that this isn’t how I expected to add to my workout count for the year, but they do count. And I’m on track to get to my goal as long as I continue doing this.
But the best part of my Saturday workout was the workout video featured one of my coaches! The videos have been done by the corporate team and its staff. That makes the videos look very similar to how they look when we are looking at the screens in class to see the exercises after the coach does the demo. And I don’t mind not knowing who the coaches are in the videos, but when they featured some of the coaches from around the country in the Saturday video, it was so awesome! Getting to see my usual Monday coach, Brendon, was such a nice surprise!
I’ve been taking Brendon’s class since I started at OTF, and it’s weird not to be in his class on Mondays. But I did get to be virtually coached by him a bit and that really made my day. I don’t know how often they will be featuring coaches around the country, but I’m excited to see if there will be another video in the future with another one of my coaches!
I’ve got another week of workouts at home coming up. Originally, the plan for isolation was only through this month. But last week, it got extended to mid-April. I expect it to be extended at least another time or two. I don’t think we will be back to normal for a while. And I have to keep up my workouts at home for so many reasons. It gives me a sense of routine, it helps my mental health, and I need it for my fitness. I’ll be doing these at-home workouts as long as I need to. And hopefully, I’ll figure out new tricks and tips to maximize what I can do and I can still have some workout wins.
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