I knew going into this past week of workouts that it might be a challenging one for me due to the pain and nausea I was expecting to have. What I didn’t expect was that the week would be challenging because of something I decided to do.
Ever since I started working out at home (which was 4 months ago now), I have known that I would need to find ways to do the home workouts with a lot of effort. I have gotten weights and other exercise things in my house now and it has been so helpful that I had things to make my workouts harder. There are still things I wish I had and do searches online to see if I can find, but I’m in a pretty good spot with what I have been able to get and I know that I am working hard.
But the place that I know I’ve been slacking off for the last few months has been my cardio. I have been doing the cardio portions during the at-home workouts to the best of my ability. And I do a lot of running in place when I can to try to get a little more cardio work in each workout. But it’s not the same as my OTF workouts in the studio. I have looked at getting or renting cardio equipment, but that hasn’t worked out for me just yet. And at some point, I probably should give up on that idea. But I didn’t want to fully give up on cardio, so I had to think of a new idea.
And when I was doing some online shopping for supplies, I did a little searching for exercise stuff (because you never know when you can find dumbbells for sale). And one of the things that came up were jump ropes. I’ve never really been someone who jump roped except in elementary school. I do have orthopedic issues that made me hesitate about getting one. But I figured that I already surpassed all expectations for my hips so far, so I might as well go for it. And if it was too painful, I didn’t have to keep doing it.
The jump rope didn’t get to me until the end of the week. And that worked out well because my pain and nausea ended up mainly being toward the beginning of the week. I did still have some struggles for the rest of the week, but it was much easier for me during my Friday and Saturday workouts. So I went for it with the jump rope.
For Friday, I didn’t really have a plan for what I wanted to do. I knew I needed to shorten the rope and I had to find a place in my house where I had the space to do it (I didn’t feel like being in front of my house). And then it was time to just try to do it. I started with jumping rope with double jumps (so I had a little jump between each time I jumped over the jump rope). But I had seen some articles online that said not to do it that way because it can make things harder. So I tried to find a rhythm to do it without the extra bounce. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to do it. And I set a goal to be able to do 20 jumps without tripping on the rope. I did it after about 8 attempts. And by that point, I was exhausted and ready to be done.
On Saturday, I again did some jump rope work after my OTF at home workout. I originally thought I would try to do another jump count challenge, but that didn’t seem to be the right thing to do after I surpassed my challenge goal on the first try (which I never expected). So I found an app to do some interval counting for me and I did 6 rounds of 15 seconds of work and 30 seconds of rest. I know it doesn’t seem like a lot, but it felt like it! And I need to ease myself into this since it’s not easy. But I’m proud of what I was able to do.
I’m hoping I can still do some jump rope work this week. But if my nausea is really bad, I might not be able to do so. It’s going to be something I just have to try and see how I feel. But I’m excited to have a new cardio thing to challenge myself with. I don’t know how many days a week I will use it, but I’m hoping to build up to doing it for each of my home workouts. I need to get more cardio work done. I know I need to. But it’s been hard to figure out what I can do at home. Now, I need to be glad that I found something that fits into my space and I just have to build up my endurance.
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