A Week With Weird Injuries (or I’m Making Excuses)

I said last week in my post about my workouts how I didn’t want to keep making excuses for why I was using the bike over the treadmill. And of course, this week I feel like I do need to explain myself a bit. But at least it’s not because of my normal reasons. This past week, my workouts were a struggle because of weird issues with my body. Over the weekend leading up to this past week, I hurt my neck. I think I slept on it funny, but it was causing me a lot of pain through the week. I know it’s nothing too bad, but it still affected me. And once that was starting to feel better toward the end of the week, I did something to my hips and quad muscles. It might have been another weird sleep thing, but I knew I had to go easy on my body. I guess I should be grateful that I am used to working with limitations because I was still able to get some good work done this past week.

Monday’s workout was a very interesting class. When you were on the treadmills you had cardio/floor work and the other half of class was doing rowing and cardio work. The pacing of things were determined by the person who started each block on the cardio side. We had 3 blocks on each side, but since we switch stations during the block it really felt more like 6 blocks on each side.

When you started on cardio, every time you started with a distance run (I was on the bike). There was a time limit 3 minutes for getting to the distance, but most of us were done in 2 minutes or under. After completing the distance, you headed to the floor. The first block had single arm neutral full thrusters and burpees. The second block had skater lunges and push ups. And the last block had hip hinge reverse flys and lunges. Everything in that block seemed to go by so quickly, but we made up for cardio time when we were doing the other half of the workout.

When you started on the rower, you rowed until the person on your treadmill was done with their distance. Then you switched to the treadmill (or bike) to be at base pace until the last 3 minutes of the block. Those last 3 minutes were a push pace, base pace, and all out pace. We repeated that for all 3 blocks we started on the rower. This workout was much more cardio and strength work, but it was a nice challenge to have and it felt very different from what I’m used to which made it fun.

Wednesday’s workout was an endurance day and we stayed in each section of the room for 15 minutes before switching so we had 1 lap around the room. For cardio, we had push paces to base paces for a few rounds. The push pace and base pace matched each time and we started with 2 minutes each and went down to 60 seconds each ending with a 30 second all out pace. I stuck with my normal resistance levels for the bike but tried to work with the speed a little. It wasn’t anything amazing, but I was able to just keep going which is sometimes all I can ask for in a workout.

On the rower, we started with a 250 meter row and then had arm raises using the mini-bands. Each time we were back on the rower we decreased the row but kept the arm raises the same. I decided to try using the medium mini-band for the arm raises to see if I could do it. Normally I would use the lightest one, but I was able to use the medium one without too much trouble. I could really feel the difference in how hard I was working, but it wasn’t so hard that I struggled with completing them. We don’t use the mini-bands that often, but I think I need to start using harder mini-bands with my arms.

For the floor, we had a really challenging workout. Normally, we do all the exercises in a block one after another so we don’t feel too exhausted or burned out. The idea of this workout was to get burned out. For all exercises we had 12, 10, 8, 6, and 4 reps; but we had to do all those rounds of each exercise before moving on to the next exercise. We had one leg squats using the bench, lunges, sumo squats, lunges with weights, and single arm shoulder presses. I sometimes would just try to do as many as I could in a set before a break and just made sure that they all added up to 40 reps (the total we had to do), but I also tried to split them up properly when I could. It wasn’t easy, but it was such a relief when we got to move on to the next exercise.

Friday’s workout was a power day, and even though we only had 1 lap around the room we had 4 little blocks on cardio and the rower which helped the time go by quicker. The blocks were the same length on both sides. We started at 2 minutes and then had 2 1/2, 3, and 3 1/2 minute blocks to follow.

For cardio, we started with a 1 minute push, 30 second base, and 30 second all out. Then we had a push before the all out. Then the base pace got longer for the last two blocks. My legs and hips were feeling the worst this day so it was a struggle to use the bike. I used my normal resistance levels but I was pedaling very slowly. Even my base pace resistance level felt like a hill to me and it was hard not to feel frustrated. I know that I didn’t pick to feel this way and doing something is better than nothing and I tried to focus on that as much as I could.

On the rower, every block started with a 200 meter row and then we had exercises with weights to finish out the block. First we had front raises and then each block we added on something else. We added hip hinge low rows, sumo squats to front raises, and shoulder presses. I might have gone a bit too heavy with the weights for this work but I really felt like I had to make up for what I didn’t get to do on the bike. And on the floor, we had one long block that had all medicine ball work. We started with woodchoppers and then had 3 rounds of lunges to tricep extensions and sit-ups to shoulder presses. Then we had more woodchoppers and rounds of side lunges to front presses and sit-ups to torso rotations. While my legs didn’t hurt too bad with this block, it wasn’t easy on my neck. I know that I have to go easy when my neck is feeling weird because it would be very bad to hurt my neck more. I took breaks when I needed them and tried to be very aware of my posture and how I was holding my body.

Saturday’s workout was a 3 partner workout and it was a special workout for Australia Day (although I don’t know how the workout connected to that). Also, while my neck was still a little sore my hips were feeling better so I was excited to work with partners and not scared I’d be holding them back.

We started with 3 minute blocks on each section of the room before we partnered up. We had a 3 minute run (or bike) for distance, 3 minute row for distance, and 3 minutes doing floor work ending with burpees until time was called. We had to remember our distances and how many burpees we did and then we got into groups of 3.

For a majority of the workout, we were doing the partner workout. Each of us was trying to match what we did in those 3 minute blocks and whoever finished first started the switch. So it could be the person on the floor, rower, or bike who finished first. I was lucky with my partners that we were all using the bike so that made things a bit easier. And I think we were equally matched so we all had our turn finishing first. The other exercises on the floor were lunges, bicycle crunches, plank punches, and full burpees. Since I use the bench for plank work, I did lose a little time getting that set up and put back each round (I didn’t want to keep it out as my partners needed that space to work). But on average we were switching every 3 minutes and it was a good amount of time to work hard before feeling exhausted.

My group did 3 rounds around the room (9 total switches) when the partner part of the workout was done. Then we had 3 blocks similar to how we started the workout, except this time we had 90 second blocks. The goal was to get half of what we were able to do when we had the 3 minute rounds at the beginning of the workout. I didn’t quite make it there on the bike, but I did make it there on the rower.

I’ll be honest, this recap was a bit of a struggle because I tried to do it without making excuses with my neck and hip issues. But I realized that those excuses were not to explain away why I was using the bike but why I might have had a tough time in the workouts. I still pushed through and was very proud of myself and I think that is what is most important to me.

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An Up And Down Week (or Working Through The Same Frustrations) A Week Of Nauseous Workouts (or Just Doing My Best) A Week Back On The Bike (or Focusing On The Good) A Week Of Struggles (or Just Tolerating Things Sometimes) Another Week Of Sick Workouts (or At Least I Did Something) Taking Things A Bit Easier (or No More Injuries)