This past week of workouts was a pretty good week for me. I wasn’t dealing with nausea at all. And I wasn’t dealing with hormonal pain. That’s always a win for me. But I did have a week where I was dealing with hip pain for most of the week. It wasn’t the worst hip pain I’ve had, but it was affecting things for me. But I’m used to that type of pain so it wasn’t too bad to have to push through it.
Monday’s workout was a power day, and it was the first time I was almost late for class! There was an accident blocking the freeway exit I use to get to my Monday class, and I made it 2 minutes after class started (we have to be in the room within the first 5 minutes of class). Since I was late, I had to start on the floor. I really don’t like starting on the floor, but it’s better than missing class completely.
We had 2 blocks on the floor. The first block was split into 2 different sections. The first section had lateral lunges, skater lunges, and plank punches. We did 2 rounds of those exercises and then had a 200-meter row. Then we had reverse lunges, hip bridges, and crunches. We were supposed to do 2 rounds of those and then have another 200-meter row, but I didn’t make it through 2 rounds of that second section. The second block had toe taps and step-ups on the benches. I modified those to do smaller movements and holding on to the straps for balance while I was on the bench (I don’t always do this, but my hip was doing ok so I felt like I should push myself). We also had double crunches and sit-ups for that second block.
For cardio, we technically had 2 blocks but it felt like one long block. The first block had all 2-minute distance challenges. After each distance challenge, we had a walking recovery that was between 1-2 minutes long. We had 4 of those and then 1-minute distance challenges with walking recoveries between 1-2 minutes long. Again, we had 4 of those challenges. I kept the resistance level on the bike at my base level for the entire thing and I really did try to increase the wattage and pedaling speed each of the distance challenges. It was not easy, even when we had the 1-minute challenges, because I was getting tired. But it was a good cardio workout and it felt different from so many other cardio workouts we have had.
Wednesday’s workout was the 12-minute distance benchmark. I was really looking forward to this workout because I wanted to see what I could do this time. I’ve had too many benchmarks that happened when I was experiencing a lot of pain and nausea. But this time, the benchmark fell right in the middle of when I was feeling my best!
I didn’t have a lot of strategy for how I was going to do the 12-minute challenge on the bike. It’s hard for me to plan as I did on the treadmill because my pedaling speed or resistance doesn’t set how far I can go the same way the treadmill speed does. I know what my previous PR was and I wanted to beat that. And I figured out what distance I needed to get on the bike at different checkpoints so I could get there. It’s still very different planning on the bike, but I at least had a bit of a plan going into it. And I was doing really well right from the start. I was on pace to just beat my previous PR from the first checkpoint I had in my head. I did have to take 2 quick breaks for water, and I panicked that those screwed things up for me and I would miss beating my old distance. But I guess that panic made me pedal faster because I beat my old PR! I was hoping to do .1 better, but I ended up doing .2 better!
I was using the bike for the rower again and I knew I wouldn’t be biking too hard after completing the 12-minute challenge. I did set the bike at my normal base resistance level (it was a bit below that for the challenge because I knew my base might be a bit too much). The rowing started at 400-meters and went down 100 meters each time before going back up by 100 meters. I just did it by time on the bike with the plan of 30-seconds for every 100-meters (so 2-minutes for 400-meters, 90-seconds for 300-meters, and so on). When we were decreasing the rowing distance, we had frogger squats between each row. And when we were increasing the rowing, we had lunges between each row. I usually don’t do lunges when rowing, but since I was using the bike, I was able to get on and off easily so I did do lunges but holding onto the bike for a bit of support.
And the floor was one long block. We started with single-leg bicep curls which are always a struggle for me with my balance. But I took my time and went slowly so I could do them. Then we had seated torso rotations with weights, knee tucks on the ab dolly, rollouts on the ab dolly, low rows on the straps, and triceps on the straps. It wasn’t the hardest floor workout, but it felt much harder than it was because of how tired I was after the benchmark.
Friday’s workout was a mix of endurance, strength, and power but it really felt like an endurance day to me. I was feeling awesome after doing so well on the benchmark on Wednesday and wanted to continue having awesome workouts for the week. And I think I did just that, but I may have overdone things a bit.
For cardio, we had 2 blocks. Both blocks had a push pace to a base pace before having a few rounds of all outs. The first block had a 90-second push pace, 90-second base pace, and 2 rounds of 1-minute all outs. And the second block had a 3-minute push pace, 1-minute base pace, and 3 rounds of 30-second all outs. I was able to get some good speed on the bike for those all outs, especially the 30-second ones. It did feel like the resistance was heavy because on Wednesday I was lower than my normal level. But I needed to be back to my normal one because I want to still work on increasing it.
I was on the bike for the rower again for this workout. The rowers started with a 400-meter row which I did as a 2-minute bike. Then it was supposed to be squat jacks to overhead presses with a medicine ball. I did them as regular squats with overhead presses. The rowing went down by 100-meters each round (so I decreased the bike by 30-seconds) with the same exercise after. Once we did 4 rounds of that, then it was just rowing (or biking) for distance until the block ended.
And on the floor, we had 2 blocks. The first block had clean to press with weights, low rows on the straps, single-leg v-ups (which I modified to be full sit-ups), and plank hip dips. And the second block had lateral lunges to single-arm upright rows, y-raises on the straps, and plank shoulder taps. I had been dealing with a bit of a bad hip day that morning, but nothing I was doing should have bothered my hips too much. But by the end of this workout, I was in a lot of pain and I felt it a lot the next day as well. Since there was nothing that should have bothered me too much, it might have been just bad luck causing the pain. But it was odd to feel that much pain when I couldn’t pinpoint what exercise might have been the reason.
Saturday’s workout was another endurance, strength, and power day. I was dealing with the hip pain that I had on Friday plus some muscle soreness, so I knew I would need to be a bit easy on myself. I didn’t want to do anything that could actually hurt me, but I also had to push through the pain a bit. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I’m so used to figuring out this balance so it’s not hard for me to do that.
We had 3 cardio blocks. Every block had a 90-second push pace, a base pace, and an all out. In the first block, the base pace was 90-seconds and the all out was 30-seconds. Each block, 15 seconds were taken off of the base pace and 15 seconds were added to the all out. It was a good cardio workout for me, especially for dealing with hip pain. The blocks were all short so there was time for me to rest, and I didn’t have to feel like I needed to do anything harder than I could do.
The rower also had 3 blocks. And 2 of those blocks were crew rows, which is when we are supposed to sync up with one person on the rower and all row together. The first block was supposed to be about 24 strokes per minute and the second block was supposed to be 26 strokes per minute. Getting my strokes to be at the right cadence wasn’t too hard, but it is very hard to sync up with everyone else. Even if we are all rowing at 24 strokes per minute, you aren’t necessarily doing every part of the row the same. So I had to focus on matching everyone else and not as much on my rowing. The last rowing block was just a row for distance and we didn’t have to sync up with anyone else or be at a specific stroke per minute.
And on the floor, we had one long block but it was split into 3 mini-blocks. Each mini-block had 2 exercises and we did 3 rounds of those before moving on to the next one. The first mini-block had ground to press with weights and seated knee tucks. The second mini-block had froggers and double crunches. And the last mini-block had push-ups and sit-ups with torso rotations. I did minor modifications for a few of the exercises to make it easier on my hips, but nothing too big like the modifications I have to do when I’m nauseous.
This week, I know it might be a tough workout week. I’m hoping that my hips don’t continue to hurt me. But I know that I will likely start having pain and nausea at some point during the week. The only thing that might work in my favor is that I had to adjust my workout schedule to be slightly different so there is a chance I might actually be done with my workouts for the week before the pain and nausea hits me. I’ll just have to wait and see.
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