A Week On The Bike (or Ending My Year By Taking It A Bit Easy)

Since the week before I started to have some horrible shin splint issues while working out, I decided to go a bit easier on myself this week. I didn’t want to hurt myself more by testing myself on the treadmill, so I did all my cardio this week on the bike.

The bike is fine. I used it for a while after my calf tear so it’s not too odd for me. But I’m not sure if my body position is affecting the heart rate monitor or if I’m really not getting my heart rate up as high as I should on the bike. I couldn’t worry too much about the heart rate this week since I knew the bike would be the best option for me.

We had some run/row work (so bike/row for me), and that helped to make the bike feel more normal. But despite the lack of increased heart rate on the bike, I still did as much as I could on all other aspects of my workout.

Rowing after being on the bike is a bit funny. My legs don’t feel right so I wasn’t able to get my wattage as high as I know I can. But I still successfully completed all my rows (most were sprints but there were some distance ones). The transition between the bike and row isn’t as smooth as the transition from treadmill to row, but since I don’t plan on being on the bike long-term I’m not allowing myself to focus on that too much.

Besides the odd cardio, I’m feeling really great about my workouts this week. I was really pushing myself a lot on my weights and I’m getting closer and closer to using the 20 pound weights for most of my work. I’m doing squats, deadlifts, pullovers, and bicep curls with that weight. But my lateral arm work is still a weak point so I was using 12 (or sometimes 10) pound weights.

It’s tough to know when I should push myself with the weights. When there are too many reps, it’s not easy to go with the heavier weights. And I know that I can have multiple sets of weights at my station so I can use what I need to, but I’m so focused on the workout that I don’t like to switch weights in the middle of a set. Just like how I was weirded out by upping my weights, I need to get over my issues with having a bunch of weights at my station.

On the straps, I was able to do some things that a few months ago would have been close to impossible. I did reverse lunges with front hops this week, and before I would have done a set of lunges followed by a set of front hops to make things easier on me. But I was able to do the set the way that we were supposed to without modifications. We also did a new move (called a golf swing) on the straps and I was feeling very successful at that move (I still feel it in my abs).

On the floor, I’m still struggling with several ab moves. If my legs have to be lifted or in the air, it can be extremely painful on my hips. So I’m doing a lot of boring regular sit-ups or crutches as my modifications. I was able to do a rotating hip dip from a plank this week (it was the first time that I had to do those) and it wasn’t as horrible as I thought it would be. Hopefully that means that my core strength is getting much better and that the stronger core is protecting my hips more (which it’s supposed to do).

I’ve got 2 more weeks of workouts to go before the end of the year and I’ve got 6 workouts before I hit my 2015 workout goal. I feel pretty confident that I will reach my goal this year (thanks to many weeks in a row of 4 workouts to make up for the lack of workouts earlier). I still can’t believe that by New Year’s Eve I will have done 175 workouts. That seems insane to me! Without a doubt, 2015 will be my most workout filled year so far (I’m not counting when I was in elementary/middle/high school with PE classes). But I’m looking forward to topping this record in 2016!

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Managing My Setbacks (or Taking My Time With Adjustments) A Full Workout Week (or Sticking With My Plan) Balancing My Workouts (or Doing Some Planning) New Year’s Workouts (or Ending 2016 and Starting 2017 With Orangetheory) A Week Of Bike Work (or Working Through Nausea and Pain) A Week Back On The Bike (or Focusing On The Good)