I had a full and challenging week of workouts last week. Not only was it a 4 workout week, I did 3 workouts in a row! That’s a double whammy in my mind! But even with the possibility of things being really tough for me, it wasn’t that bad of a week.
I did get off to a very odd start on Monday. I don’t know if I was too tired or just feeling out of it, but for the first time since I got them I forgot to wear my calf sleeves for my workout. I have no clue how I did this (my heart rate monitor lives under my calf sleeves so I had to move them out of the way to put on my heart rate monitor), but it happened.
The calf sleeves are good for helping my calf feel stronger, but they also help my shin splints so I was extremely nervous to work out without them. It was a 30 minute treadmill block and while I had a little pain, the treadmill wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected it to be. I did try to keep things a bit easier for me since I was so scared to injure myself, so I didn’t push myself too much with the incline or the speed. But it was worth going easy on myself if that is what kept me from getting hurt.
After the treadmill block, I tried to be tough on the floor work. I ended up going lighter than usual on the arm work, but I still tried to be kicking butt on everything else. We had some rowing on the floor blocks including a 250 meter row. And I was able to do my 250 meter row in 56 seconds! That’s not a personal best, but it was better than my goal time of a minute! The only downside on the floor work was when we had to be in a plank position and I did it on my toes (which I’ve been testing out doing instead of being on my knees). I didn’t think about doing it without the calf sleeves and I felt my calf muscle pull a bit. It wasn’t a painful pull, more of pressure, but it still scared me and I dropped immediately to my knees so I didn’t risk hurting myself.
All things considered, my workout without the calf sleeves wasn’t bad, but I don’t plan on repeating that mistake again anytime soon.
Tuesday I was thinking that maybe I would be on the bike (to help break up my 3 workouts in a row), but then I saw that my friend Amanda was in class so I took a treadmill next to her. Everything was in 5 minute blocks and we did do switching between blocks so I was pretty happy. When we switch, I don’t hurt as much on the treadmill so I felt like it was a bit of an easier treadmill day. The last block of that day was a partner block, so Amanda and I got to work together. One person had to row 200 meters and the other person had to do squats the entire time. It wasn’t an easy block and I’m sure that Amanda was wishing that I would row faster so she could stop with the squats, but we got through it without too much trouble.
Wednesday we were back to not switching between blocks, but since we had a switch day the day before I was ok with that. We had a 3 minute push pace, which is still one of those big challenges for me. I was able to do it at 6% incline at 3.5 miles an hour, so I was pretty happy with myself. I’m starting to think that I’m almost ready to have my base pace back at 3.5 miles an hour. I might test that out another day when we have switching between blocks because it won’t be a solid 30 minutes at 3.5 miles an hour or faster. But since I’m able to do the longer pushes without too much trouble, it’s a really good sign. I also decided to test out my speed on my all out pace. When we had one, I decided to go a bit crazy (for me) and set the treadmill at 3.8 miles an hour. It was super tough for me and I know that I’m not ready to have the treadmill at that speed on a regular basis, but I got through it and it was a nice little challenge for me. After all that speed on the treadmill, my legs were feeling a bit weak by the time I got to the floor work. There were a ton of pushups that day, so even though my arms were so tired my legs got a break.
Friday should have been my day to be on the bike since I’ve decided that my 4th workout of the week will be on the bike to make sure that I don’t push myself too hard. But when I found out it would be a run/row day, I knew I wanted to be on the treadmill (it’s easier to transition quickly to and from the rower from the treadmill for me instead of the bike). I figured since it was a run/row day that it would be ok to push myself a bit more because the treadmill time would be a bit limited.
The treadmill segments were .125 and .15 miles and I was doing all of them at 3.5 miles an hour and 8% incline. That’s a high incline for me considering that the treadmill segments took me over 2 minutes each time. I typically only do 8% incline for all outs which are always a minute or less. But I was able to do all my treadmill segments like that (I just had to take a little break after each segment to catch my breath before moving on to the rower) and my rows were ok. I wasn’t pushing myself as much as I did earlier that week, but I was still doing my rows within the recommended times.
The floor work was a pretty good variety of moves. We had some lunges, arm work, ab work, squats, pushups, and leg work. I was able to do my lunges with one foot on the workout bench, but I wasn’t able to hold weights in my hands because I needed to keep balancing myself on the wall. I’m very unstable balancing on one leg, but I really want to get back to where I used to be with my balance. And the only way to do that is to push myself even when it’s not the most comfortable thing. I also pushed myself on the TRX straps. We had to do lunges to single leg squats, and I used to always do double leg squats instead. But on Friday, I decided that I was going to go slow and see if I could do the single leg squats. They weren’t pretty or fast and I had to use my other leg for balance, but I was able to do them for the first time! Again, I was pretty unstable and unbalanced, but the more I’m able to do these the better I’m going to get.
I felt like almost every workout this week was a different challenge for me, and I think that I succeeded in all of them. This week will be a bit easier for me, but now that I know some new limits that I can push myself to, I’m going to test them out if I can!
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Some Holiday Workouts (or Back On The Treadmill This Week)
More Progress And Steps Back (or Trying My Hardest)
Switching Things Up (or Challenging Workouts)
Getting Back To Normal Workouts (or Balancing Hard Work And Taking It Easy)
Working Through Physical Challenges (or Not Letting Feeling Bad Ruin My Workouts)
Tough Workouts (or Having Challenges Every Day)
