For this past week of workouts, I knew I would likely start dealing with some pain and nausea, but I tried to not let that stress me out before it happened. Instead, I tried to focus on the good things coming up during the workout week. I had a slightly different workout schedule, but having that allowed for something pretty cool.
Monday’s workout was a strength day, and it was a pretty normal strength-based workout. For cardio, we had 2 blocks. The first block was rounds of short distances where we added to our incline/resistance level each time. We were on our own for this block since everyone would have different timing with completing the distances. But we were supposed to remember our distance from that first block and use it as a goal for the second block. In the second block, we had rounds of a 90-second push pace at an incline with 30-seconds of a base pace between each one. Because the timing was different from when we were going on our own, we had to try to make sure we could beat our distance from the first block. With the bike, you don’t see as specific of a distance as you would on the treadmill (the bike goes one decimal point and the treadmill has three decimal points), but just as the block ended I beat my first block’s distance!
The rower had a lot of medicine ball work with a little bit of rowing. This was because the next day was a rowing benchmark (I wasn’t going to do that workout, but I knew it was happening) so we weren’t supposed to burn out too much. In the first block, we had ground to press, front press, and squat to press with the medicine ball first and then a 100-meter row. Each time we had the row, we increased the distance by 50 meters. And in the second block, we started with a 100-meter all-out row and then had more medicine ball exercises. We had bicep curls, overhead tricep extensions, and calf raises. And again, each time on the rower we increased the row by 50 meters.
And we also had 2 blocks on the floor. In the first block, we had single-arm chest presses, concentration curls, and shoulder presses to stand. I was really struggling with the shoulder presses and then standing, so I split that exercise into shoulder presses alone and then squats. And in the second block, we had single arm low rows, push-ups, and hip hinge reverse flys. I think I did a lot better on the second block than I did with the first.
Wednesday’s workout was a mix of endurance, strength, and power and it was themed around cluster exercises. The idea with cluster exercises is that you do one thing for 3 different rounds and you work until fatigue for the rounds so you don’t necessarily have a specific number of reps or time for cardio to complete.
For cardio, the plan was to have a 30-second all-out followed by a 30-second recovery. Then we did an all-out as long as we could followed by a 30-second recovery. And finally one more all-out as long as we could followed by a 1-minute recovery. And each round, the incline/resistance level for the all-outs increased by 1. The idea was that you should never be able to do an all-out longer than a minute or your all-out isn’t hard enough. For me, I usually managed to stick it out for about 45-seconds before I needed the recovery.
For the rower, we had rounds of an all-out row and a recovery row with a medicine ball exercise in the middle. We had 3 rounds of 10 strokes of an all-out followed by 5 strokes of a recovery row. Then we either had an overhead press or a front press with the medicine ball before going back to the 3 rounds on the rower. I know 10 strokes of an all-out row doesn’t sound that hard, but when you only have 5 strokes to recover is gets really tough!
And on the floor, we had 2 blocks. In the first block, we had seated low rows and chest presses on the straps. For the seated low rows, we did 5 reps for the first round, had 10 seconds to recover, and then did 2 more rounds until failure with recovery between those rounds. And for the second block, we had weighted chest presses and high rows on the straps. For the weighted chest presses, it was the same as the low rows with the 3 rounds with recovery.
Even though I had my family Thanksgiving workout 2 weeks early when I worked out with my dad and brother, I still wanted to do a Thanksgiving workout. And since I had the day off of work for the holiday, I had a lot of flexibility with what time I would work out. So when I was looking at the schedule, I noticed that there was a Lift 45 class as the last class of the day (which was still in the morning). Lift 45 is a really unique class. Instead of working with cardio and the rower, it’s a 45-minute class that is only on the floor. My studio does Lift 45 classes each week, but the times they are scheduled are always times that I’m working. So I decided to take this opportunity to try something new that I’ve been wanting to check out!
We had 4 blocks for the entire workout, but we started with a group warm-up on the floor since nobody was warming up on cardio (which is what I’m used to). The first block had goblet squats and jump squats (which I did as squats with calf raises). The second block had hip hinge swings, step-ups (which I did as lunges), and sit-ups to squats using the benches. The third block had sumo squats, single-arm deadlifts, and mountain climbers. And the last block was all lunges, which had different types of lunges but I had to modify them to just be regular lunges for the entire thing.
Obviously, this workout was a lower-body class. The Lift 45 classes are split into upper or lower body workouts. And while lower body is usually harder for me, I didn’t know how hard this workout would be without cardio. I was pleasantly surprised to see that this may have actually been harder than a regular workout for me! Maybe I pushed myself more because I knew I wouldn’t have cardio. Or maybe I’ve been going too easy on the floor in most of my workouts. No matter the reason, this was the first workout that made me seriously sore after it and I loved that! I wish this class was offered times I could go, but maybe in the future, I’ll have more opportunities to take them. The only real downside for me in this workout was this was the first workout that my nausea really hit me, so I had to go easy when I wanted to push myself. But at least the nausea wasn’t that bad so I didn’t have to limit myself too much.
And even though this was my actual Thanksgiving workout, I still used my workout from 2 weeks ago in my photo collage of all my family Thanksgiving workouts that I shared online.
Being sore from Lift 45 made my Friday workout a bit harder. I also had a bit more nausea in that class, but it still wasn’t as bad as I know it can be. This workout was a power day, and I’m glad it wasn’t another strength day. But we had a lot of similar exercises to what I did on Thursday, so that was a bit tough.
We had 3 blocks for cardio. The first block was all about 30-second intervals. We had rounds of a push pace to a base pace and ended with an all-out. The second block was a 3-minute distance challenge. And the last block was all 45-second intervals with a push pace, all-out, recovery, and one last all-out.
On the rower, we also had 3 blocks. The first block had rounds of a 1-minute all-out row followed by lunges. The second block was rounds of a 30-second all-out row with squats and the goal was to try to beat the distance from the first row (which I didn’t quite get to). And the last block was timed out with cardio with the 45-second intervals. I really struggled on the rower overall because of how I was sore, so I rowed slower than normal to make sure my form wasn’t too bad.
And on the floor, we had 2 blocks. The first block had deadlifts, hip hinge swings, skater lunges, leg raises, and sit-ups. The deadlifts and hip hinge swings were especially tough since I had done them the day before, so I went a bit lighter with the weights than I normally do. And the second block was timed with the rest of the room with 45-second intervals and we alternated between hip bridges and v-ups (which I did as crunches).
While I have done weeks before where I do 3 workout days in a row, I wonder if having the Lift 45 class made things a bit harder for me. But I still am so glad I took that class since I don’t know when I’ll have another chance. And I might have a chance to try out doing 3 workouts in a row again because there is a chance that this week and next week I won’t be able to work out on Saturday. I have toyed with the idea of not doing Saturday workouts since I have to do them so late in the morning because of my work schedule. So this might be a good test to see if I want to switch to only doing weekday workouts. I guess I’ll have to wait and see how it goes!
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