Kicking Off The 12 Days of Fitness (or It’s Like Hell Week Again)

For the first 12 days of December, Orangetheory is doing the 12 Days Of Fitness. These are harder workouts than normal (similar to Hell Week) and they all have different themes. I was excited about the workouts because I love it when we get to do something a bit different. And I don’t mind the harder workouts because I like to prove to myself that I can do them.

Monday’s workout was 2 Crew Rows. And the workout really did have 2 sets of crew rows. It was a 2 group class and the workout was divided into cardio/floor and row (so it was a run/floor instead of a run/row). Every block was 10 1/2 minutes and we switched between the blocks.

Both of the cardio/floor blocks were the same. It started with a .2 mile run (or .8 for the bike) at a flat incline and every time we got back to cardio we increased the incline by 1% (or 1 gear on the bike). After the run, we had lunges with weights, hip hinge swings, and low rows on the straps. We kept doing that rotation for the entire block and when we got back to cardio/floor for the second block we started the cardio at the incline that we ended the first block on.

For rowing, we had lots of crew rows. Crew rows are when one person on the rower is the leader and everyone is supposed to match their cadence and speed. It’s not easy to do this, especially if you aren’t on a rower next to the leader. But it’s a good challenge. The first crew row we had was 4 minutes and we were supposed to be at 24 strokes/minute. The next one was 2 minutes at 26 strokes/minute. Then 1 minute at 28 strokes/minutes. And it ended with 30 seconds at 30 strokes/minute. Between each crew row, we had 1 minute to recover where we could row at our own speed and not have to match anyone. The second block had the same crew rows but we started with the 30 seconds one and ended with 4 minutes. I was never the leader, but I was fine with that. I was just focusing on my stroke rate and trying to match the leader each time and that’s all I needed.

Wednesday’s workout was 4 Falling Hills. And that was a very good explanation of what we had to do. Cardio was one long block but the rower and floor switched back and forth.

I’m not going to write out all that we did for cardio, but it was a lot! We had 14 minutes of hill work. Every minute was a different incline and there was no pattern or reason for the order. We had some high incline work and some medium incline work. But there wasn’t a walking recovery or a flat road recovery until the 14 minutes were done. I was struggling a bit for this workout because my hips were in a lot of pain (it was raining so I had pain from that). I did play around with the resistance levels on the bike, but I wasn’t doing it exactly how I should have done them. But doing some incline/resistance work is better than nothing.

The rower and the floor were the same every time we were there. For the block that I started on the rower, I had rower, floor, rower and for the block I started on the floor I had floor, rower, floor. Each of those little blocks was 4 minutes long so we were switching every 4 minutes. On the rower, we had a 1-minute all out row, 10 lunges (which I did as squats), a 1-minute row, and 1 minute of lunges (again, I did them as squats).

And on the floor, we had all timed work. We had 1 minute of bench low rows with our left arm, 1 minute of bench low rows with our right arm, 1 minute of pullovers, and 1 minute of standing triceps with weights. We were all told to go easy with the weights since doing something for a minute isn’t easy. I also had to work through how I could do the low rows because I wasn’t able to do the bench work. I tried just bending over, but that started to hurt me as well so I ended up doing them while sitting on the bench. It was a little frustrating, but my friends reminded me that I still did the exercise and that’s what counts.

Friday’s workout was 6 Legs A Shaking and it was a very accurate workout name! This was a really tough class and I was so grateful to have a 3 group workout so I wasn’t at any section of the room for too long.

The cardio work was rounds of 1-minute all out with 1-minute recoveries. And each time we had an all out the incline was supposed to increase by 1%. I knew that if I started the bike at my normal base resistance level that I wouldn’t be able to increase it by 1 every round, so I started a bit lower than normal. In total, we had 7 all outs and even with starting lower than normal I was so tired by the end.

On the rower, we started with a 1000-meter row. This was a long row to start with and I tried to not take breaks. After that, we had goblet squats before moving on to a 750-meter row. I was able to finish that, do the squats, and get started on the next row when the block ended. While I do enjoy long rows because they give me a lot of time to work on my technique, my legs were already so tired from the bike so rowing wasn’t as great as it could be.

And on the floor, I had to do a lot of modifications because it was a lot of work I couldn’t do. We started with single leg sit to stands (which I can do) and then it was single leg work on the bench (which I can’t do). Instead of the bench work, I did regular lunges as well as high knees using the straps. We also had sit-ups to stands with a dumbbell and toe reaches. By the end of the workout, my legs were definitely shaking!

Saturday’s workout was 7 Bells A Swinging and I was still recovering from Friday’s workout. Fortunately, this workout was a bit more upper body so my lower body could still rest.

For cardio, we had rounds of distance challenges along with regular pushes. The distance challenges got shorter and the push paces got longer. But all the blocks were the same length so it wasn’t too bad. And I ended up having bonus time on the bike because the rower I was supposed to use ended up breaking. I tried to use it after they fixed it, but it was sticking a lot and I knew that I could injure myself trying to make it work. So I did the bike for my rowing work and that had distance challenges along with squats using a medicine ball.

And on the floor, it was an interesting format. Our main exercises were push-ups, chest fly to tricep extensions with weights, tricep extensions on the straps, and plank punches. Between each exercise, we had another exercise to do. The first round we had single-arm hip hinge swings and in the second round we had skier swings. After the second round we could just do the main exercises. I went into that workout with tired legs and I left the workout with tired legs and arms!

We finish out the 12 Days of Fitness this week and I’m excited to see what else is coming up. The year is almost over and I’m so close to many of the goals I set for myself. I can’t wait to see what I can accomplish in these last few weeks!

You Might Also Like

Hell Week To Orange Voyage (or One Challenge To Another) Starting Off Hell Week (or 5 Workouts And They Were All Hard) A Very Short Workout Week (or Having Some Sick Days) Some New Year Workouts (or Finishing Out 2019 and Kicking Off 2020) Finishing Up 12 Days of Fitness (or This Felt Like A Long Hell Week) 12 Days Of Christmas Workouts (or This Feels A Lot Like Hell Week)