With all of the at-home workouts, Orangetheory is trying really hard to make them as fun and unique as the regular in-studio workouts are. I really appreciate the effort that they are making and I feel like they are doing a great job considering that they didn’t have this plan in place before the pandemic started. The workouts aren’t necessarily as hard as they are when we have someone coaching us, but I think that also has something to do with what efforts I put in when I’m home alone compared to when I’m in class.
But this past week of workouts was made extra hard. One of the things that Orangetheory does is have a challenging week called Mayhem. It’s similar to Hell Week, but during May. These workouts are very tough and they usually push you to try to do more than normal. I love having these challenging weeks because it does help me believe that I can do more than I normally do in workouts. And since almost all the studios around the world are still closed (very few are open, but more are getting ready to open), they made Mayhem part of the at-home workouts this time.
You can usually get something for completing Mayhem in-studio. I think it’s always a hat (Hell Week is always a shirt). This time, you could pre-order the hat to have it after completing Mayhem. I think you were supposed to do 4 of the 6 workouts, but because of the timing of when the workouts were I only got 3 done. But I still pre-ordered the hat and used it for motivation during each of the workouts.
The first part of the week of workouts was much better than the second part of the week. I didn’t have too many issues with pain and nausea on Monday or Wednesday. But Friday and Saturday were really bad. I had to make so many modifications in my workouts to be able to get through things. But I still tried to make the workouts harder for me in my own way. I did focus as much as I could on working on strength/weight-lifting exercises since those don’t always make me feel worse.
What I did notice while doing that was that I do feel weaker than I did before. I have known that this would be a possibility as I’m not able to work as hard at home as I do in class, but it was hard when I really thought I was trying. But I just have to keep going because that’s the only way I can limit how much of a set-back I have. I know when I get back to class (hopefully at some point this summer they can reopen safely) I will have to not have any expectations of what I will be able to do. I might struggle in the workouts the way I did when I start. But I also know that I might have a faster time getting back to where I was since I had already been there once. I honestly don’t know what it will be like when I get back to class, but having few expectations will probably be best for me.
Even though I know that this Mayhem wasn’t as hard as past ones were, I still am proud of what I did. I tried my best. I worked as hard as I could. I pushed through pain and nausea when I could. And I did have harder workouts than the other workouts have been.
I know this week is likely to be a struggle, mainly due to pain and nausea, but I’m still figuring out how to do workouts the best that I can. It’s not as easy to modify things at home, so I’m still figuring out what options work for me. I’m doing a lot of completely different exercises instead of modifications due to what equipment is available at my house. So I’ll have another week of practicing how to modify things for myself this week.
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