Going into this past week of workouts, I knew it could be a tough one for me. The beginning of the week should have been good, but as the week went on I knew that I might be dealing with a lot of pain and nausea. And I thought I was prepared to deal with that, but this past week really took me by surprise and made things even harder than I planned.
Monday wasn’t a bad day and probably the best workout of the week for me. I’m glad I was feeling ok since I struggled the rest of the week.
For cardio, we had rounds of a 1-minute push pace and a 1-minute recovery. Even though we were at a push pace, we were supposed to work on increasing the push pace each time. There were too many intervals for me to increase my resistance level every time, so I came up with a slightly different plan. I alternated between increasing the resistance level on the bike and increasing my speed. So I would do each level twice and try to be faster the second time. I think it worked pretty well for a plan until the end when the resistance level was pretty high.
On the rower, we also had 1-minute intervals. We alternated between a 1-minute row and 1 minute to do an exercise. The exercise alternated between 2 types of lunges, but I did lunges for one and squats for the other. We had to do 12 reps of the exercise and whatever extra time we had we could rest. But usually, I was getting back on the rower with maybe 15 seconds before the next 1-minute row.
And on the floor, we had a single block with 2 mini-blocks. The first mini-block had squats, high rows to low rows with weights, and plank kicks. And the second mini-block had deadlifts, push-ups, and ab rockers. I couldn’t exactly do the plank kicks, so I did plank taps instead. But the modifications for the floor were pretty minimal.
Tuesday was the toughest day for me. It started fine, but things went downhill pretty early on and I struggled for the rest of the class.
We had 2 blocks for each section of the room. For cardio, the first block was mainly 30-second intervals. We had some push paces to all-outs and some push paces that went into a base pace before an all-out. And after each all-out in the block, we had a 30-second recovery. The second block had the same intervals as the first block, but everything was at an incline instead. During that second block, I started to feel a bit of nausea. This wasn’t unexpected, but it hit me a lot harder than it normally would which took me by surprise. And toward the end of that second block, I could tell the nausea wasn’t going away like it normally does and I needed to leave class. I’ve only had to leave class to be sick a few times before, so it’s rare for this to happen to me. And this was the worst it’s ever been. I was in the bathroom sick for a few minutes and I started to wonder if I would need to leave class. Eventually, I was able to keep down some water and some of the nausea passed, so I returned to class. I know that probably sounds crazy, but I figured I could just go easy for the rest of the workout and see what happened.
Because I was in the bathroom, I missed the very beginning of the rowing work. But I tried to get into it as quickly as I could. The first block was timed with the cardio with 30-second intervals. I was grateful the intervals were short because that helped me continue with the workout. I also didn’t row as hard as I know I can with the all-outs, so that probably helped too. The second block was rounds of a 30-second all-out row with lunges between each row. This was a little harder since I didn’t have as much time to recover, but again I was grateful the intervals were short.
And on the floor, the first block was timed with the rest of the room for the first block. We had 30-second intervals of exercises with rests when cardio and rowing had their recoveries. We had lunges, shoulder presses, hammer curls, and bicep curls. We repeated the exercises throughout the block and I was glad that none of the exercises were things that could make my nausea worse. The second block was timed on our own. We had marching in place with weight overhead, step-ups, and bird dogs with toe taps. I put the bench lower so I could do the step-ups since I do try to do those whenever I can. Again, I was grateful that none of those exercises made me feel worse but I wasn’t feeling great for the entire floor block and just tried to get through it.
Whatever nausea issue I had on Tuesday eventually went away, but by Wednesday I was dealing with the normal nausea that I was expecting to have. But I was prepared and took all my anti-nausea medications before class which helped to take a bit of the edge off.
We had 2 blocks for cardio. The first block was really tough for me on the bike. We had 1-minute intervals and the incline/resistance level went up every minute. I didn’t start quite as high as I should have, but I knew that I was going to be working my way up. The second block was a little easier but still tough. We had 30-second all-outs at an incline with recoveries between each one. And the recovery got longer each time. Because I was dealing with nausea, I only increased the resistance for some of the all-outs. If I knew I was in the middle of a nausea wave, I just used my normal all-out resistance level.
On the rower, we had one long block and the row focus was doing 500-meter rows. This is usually a really tough distance for me to do since there is a lot of endurance necessary with it, and being nauseous didn’t make it any easier. But I just tried to not take breaks unless I really needed to and I was able to only take a few for nausea and none for endurance issues.
And on the floor, we had one long block which focused on 2 back-to-back exercises that were about strength for one and power for the other. We had woodchoppers and plank pull-throughs, skier swings and deadlifts, and uppercuts and arm raises. The woodchoppers were supposed to be with lunges, but I did them as regular ones. Those as well as the skier swings were adding to my nausea, so I had to rest in the middle of those exercises a few times. But considering how I was feeling, I was very happy with how I did.
Thursday was what I expected for a bad day for me with pain and nausea. It wasn’t unbearable, but it made everything a lot harder for me.
Cardio and rowing worked together for this workout. Every interval was 4 minutes long. If you started the block on cardio you did 1 cardio interval, 1 rowing interval, and 1 cardio interval. And if you started the block on the rower you did rowing for the first and last interval and cardio for the middle one. So in the end, you had 3 intervals for each. Each cardio block was the same, we had a 4-minute distance challenge. And on the rower, we always started with a 10-stroke drill and then rested before increasing the stroke drill by 5 strokes each time. I struggled a lot with the longer stroke drills, so I pretty much kept it to 10 or 15 each time and just alternated between those.
On the floor, we focused on cluster sets with the exercises. So we did a set number of reps first and then go heavier with the weight and do as many reps as possible. The goal is to try to get usually between 6-10 reps with the heavier weight. We had cluster sets of a squat to calf raise, low rows, and bicep curls. And between each exercise, we had either mountain climbers or skater lunges. I used 15-pound weights for my lighter sets and 20-pound weights for my heavier sets for all exercises. I know I probably could have done better, but I was just really nauseous on the floor and didn’t want to risk getting sick as I did on Tuesday again.
This really wasn’t my best week for workouts, but I think considering everything I was dealing with, I did pretty decently. And I know that this week is probably going to be another rough one, I just hope that I don’t have the bad extremes like this past week had.
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