What Fitness Goals Are Next? (or Continuing To Impress Myself)

You may have noticed in my past few fitness posts that I’ve been hitting some amazing goals lately. I don’t know why things have been going so well for me, but I think it might be that the weight of thinking I need surgery is off of my mind now. I’m able to focus on me again and doing what I want to do and I don’t have to stress about a setback that would potentially set me back months.

With this positive flow going in my workouts, I’ve started to question if I’m doing enough. I’m not in a plateau or anything, but I wonder if I could do more or better. And I also have to figure out what that more or better means to me. I want to do so much, but figuring out the steps to get there are tough for me. So this past week of workouts, I focused on just doing my best and seeing what I could do so I could start planning some ideas for new fitness goals.

Monday’s workout was a power based one and we switched between each block of work. Not only did we switch between blocks, every block was only 4.5 minutes long which isn’t that much. I knew I would need to focus on doing as much as I could in those 4.5 minutes each time to maximize the time I had in that section of the room. The treadmill work started with push to all out paces and I was running everything. I kept my speeds where I’m comfortable with my push at 4.5 mph and my all out at 5.5 mph, but in the end we were just doing all out runs with very short walking recoveries. I wasn’t able to recover that much in those short walks so I had to bring my running speed for those all outs down to my normal push speed.

On the floor, we had 3 blocks with 2 moves in each block. It was a good variety of work with squats, weighted arm work, sit ups, hop overs, and single leg deadlifts (which I was able to do as single leg deadlifts with one hand on the bench for support). With the blocks being so short, I never got to do too much of each exercise so I didn’t really get too tired at all. And the last floor block was actually a rowing block that had the same pattern as the treadmill (45 second all out rows with 30 seconds of recovery in between).

Wednesday’s workout was an endurance day and it was the perfect day to test out some new fitness goal ideas. I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m wondering what I should do as far as training for my next 5K. I’m torn between increasing my run time (like I did with my last 5K) or decreasing my walk time. I don’t know what would be best for me and I haven’t really had a lot of opportunities to test each out. That is until this past workout.

Pretty much the entire treadmill time was 90 second push paces followed by either 30 second or 45 second base paces. I ran all my pushes and walked all my bases. While 90 seconds is less running time than I did in my last race, the walking time was decreased too. It was an interesting test for me to see how my body would take it and I think that it’s still something that I need to try out more often. I was feeling a bit more tired than usual during the workout because of the reduced walking time, but I wasn’t feeling like I couldn’t keep doing it. And it make it happy to see that even with the shorter running time, I was still able to do more than 2 miles in class.

The floor had another day of a good variety of floor work. There were squats, hamstring work, ab work, and shoulders. We also had a 1 minute timed row. My best 1 minute timed row was 313 meters, but that was a while ago. I know that I can do 300 meter in a minute since I finally got that back down, but this time I was so tired at the end of the workout that I knew I wouldn’t be able to get that far. But even with the tiredness, I was able to do 285 meters on the first round and 288 meters on the second. Not too shabby for me.

Friday was a power day which meant a ton of running for me! There were 3 treadmill blocks that all had the same pattern. It was push to all out paces where the all outs in block 1 were a minute, block 2 were 45 seconds, and block 3 were 30 seconds. Since there were no base paces except during the warm-up, I pretty much ran everything that was supposed to be a run. I wanted to work on increasing my all out pace and was able to bump it up a bit each block, but I finished that workout knowing that I probably could have done more than I did. I hate that feeling, but sometimes I don’t know how far I can push myself until I’m done.

The floor had 3 blocks this time. The first block had skater lunges, plank work, weighted swing work, and rows with the straps. There was also a 250 meter row in that block. I only made it to the rower once and that was a bit annoying to me. The next block was all core work with mountain climbers, planks, and sit ups. It was so tiring working my core that much, but I’m glad I got through it. And the last block was on the rower with decreasing rows with frog squats.

Saturday’s workout was a strength day and it was also a 3G workout. The very beginning of class was a mini tornado workout. We were on each part of the room for 2 minutes and switched. The treadmill was 2 minutes on a hill, the rower was a 2 minute row, and the floor was a mix of push ups and squats. After those 6 minutes, I felt like we had done half a class! But then it was time to get the class really started.

I started on the treadmill but I knew as soon as I got to class that I’d be walking the entire time. I had worked pretty hard the rest of the week and taking one easy day is helpful to make sure I don’t exhaust my body too much. I think I’m finally finding the good balance that will allow me to make 4 workout weeks the norm and not something I do only sometimes. The treadmill work was some pretty high inclines. In fact, even for the people who run they were instructed to walk so I didn’t feel as bad about having to walk for that class. It was only 15 minutes on the treadmill, but we were pretty much at an incline the entire time. I was usually between 6-10% but there were a few times we were up at 12% and that was starting to get a bit too much for me.

Next I was over on the floor where we had one long block with lunges, shoulder work, arm work, and abs. Even though it was just one block, it felt pretty quick unlike some of the other times that one long block feels endless. And after 15 minutes it was time for me to head to the rower. On the rower, we had 500 meter rows with lunges in between each row set. I didn’t really have that much of a goal in mind with my rowing because I couldn’t remember what I had done in the past and I wasn’t going to look it up on my phone. I decided that maybe under 2 minutes would be nice. And for both of the rows, I was able to do just that! And it turns out that my second row was actually a new PR for me!

I’m glad that I did some new PRs and tested some new things this past week. I’m still working on what I want some new fitness goals to be but at least I have a much clearer picture in my head on what my body is able to do now!

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