Surviving The Workout Week (or I Forgot This Was Likely To Be A Bad Week)

I’ve been so lucky recently with having so many good workout weeks. Even when I was expecting things to be tough with pain and nausea, it hasn’t been as bad as it normally is so the bad weeks are more like not good weeks. This has spoiled me and I think I also got a bit lazy with tracking when my bad weeks could be popping up. And unfortunately, this past week was a bad week for me. I should have expected it, but it really did surprise me a bit when it happened and I wasn’t as prepared as I usually am.

Monday wasn’t too bad, but I was starting to feel a bit off. I wasn’t having too much pain, but I was feeling a little uneasy and queasy, which is usually a sign that some bad nausea is coming. I didn’t let that feeling hold me back too much since I knew that this could mean this would be my only decent workout of the week.

For cardio, we had 2 blocks. In the first block, which was the longer block, we had rounds of a 1-minute push pace, 30-second all-out, and 1-minute recovery. And in the second block, we had rounds of a 30-second all-out and a 1-minute recovery. I really enjoyed both cardio blocks and they weren’t too bad for me since they were shorter efforts. And I got to work on trying to pedal faster for my all-outs with the resistance level I’ve been using.

On the rower, we had one long block. We started with a 600-meter row followed by step-out squats. We did that once. Then we had a 400-meter row followed by side-to-side hops and step-out squats, and did that twice. Then we had a 200-meter row with good mornings, side-to-side hops, and step-out squats. We were supposed to do that last thing 4 times, but I only made it through one before the block was done. It wasn’t my best rowing block, but far from my worst.

And on the floor, we had 2 blocks. The first block was the longer one and we had 6 exercises total for the block. But we started by just doing the first 2 exercises and then starting over again and doing 3 of the exercises. We kept building upon the exercises each round. We had goblet squats, kneeling shoulder presses, bridge hold pullovers, side plank hip dips, and hyper extensions. Some of the exercises were supposed to be on the BOSU, but I modified a few of them to be on the floor so I could do the exercise. But I was happy with how I did. The second block was a core blast, but I had to modify the exercises so I could do them. So for the last few minutes, I alternated between sit-ups and bicycle crunches. That was tough enough for my core to be on fire at the end of the workout.

On Tuesday, I was starting to feel a lot worse. I wasn’t in a lot of pain, but I was extremely nauseous. And I realized that morning I was out of my anti-nausea meds and had to request a refill because I was out of refills. That put me in a bit of a bad mood because I knew those meds would help me feel better and I didn’t have that option. So I just had to do what I could.

For cardio, we had 2 blocks. In the first block, we had specific distances to get to, and when we got to the distance we were supposed to increase our incline/resistance level. I was pedaling really slowly, so I didn’t get that far and didn’t increase the resistance level that much. I was actually a bit surprised at how badly I was doing with the bike because even on my bad days it’s not usually that bad. In the second block, we were doing a similar thing, but we started at the top incline/resistance level we got to in the first block and decreased it each time we got to the distance. I did do a bit better in the second block and had more time at my base resistance level at the end.

On the rower, the first block started with 2 rounds of lunges and then tricep extensions with a medicine ball. After those 2 rounds, then we got on the rower and rowed until the block was done. My rowing was slow, but I think I was doing better on the rower than on the bike. The second block started with rowing the distance we got in the first block and then getting off the rower to do 2 rounds of squats to reach and bicep curls with the medicine ball. After those exercises, we got back on the rower and rowed until the block was done. I did get my distance and exercises done with a little time left to do a bit more rowing.

On the floor, we also had 2 blocks. The first block was a mini-band block. We had lateral walks, hammer curls, and knee tucks. I did pretty decent with this first block. Even with the knee tucks, which are usually a huge struggle for me, I managed to do them with some rest in the middle of the reps. The second block was a timed block with 45 seconds of active time and 20 seconds of rest. We had deadlifts, chest presses, step-ups, and v-ups. I had to do lunges for the step-ups, but that was the only real modification I had to make. I was happy with how this workout ended considering how horrible I felt going into it.

I was really feeling horrible on Wednesday. And I felt even worse when I found out it was a partner workout. I don’t mind partner workouts, but when I’m feeling bad I don’t like them because I feel bad for the person I’m paired up with. I usually ask to be the odd man out if we have an uneven number of people in the class, but that wasn’t the case for this workout. But I was lucky because the person I was partnered with was ok with us kind of doing things on our own because she wasn’t feeling great either. And this partner workout didn’t really depend on us tagging each other out, so it worked out for us. Also, for this partner workout, we were always working in the same section of the room, so we were side-by-side instead of depending on each other to rotate around the room. So we had blocks like a normal workout, but we were supposed to work together.

For cardio, the way it was supposed to work was the active partner was doing a specific distance as a push pace and the other partner was in a base pace. And they just switched back and forth. In the second block, there was the added challenge of working with inclines too. My partner and I kind of did this as it was supposed to be, but since I was on the bike and she was on the treadmill, we weren’t the best at tagging each other so we just did the distance and did our own little base pace breaks.

On the rower, the first partner block had the active partner doing a 250-meter row and the other partner doing a base row. The second block was the same idea but it was a stroke drill instead of a distance. And we had an all-out a the very end. This time, my partner and I just did our own things and didn’t worry about the partner aspect of it. I just tried to row as much as I could, but I took a lot of breaks for my nausea to pass.

And on the floor, the blocks had exercises for the active partner and one exercise for the other partner to do. But again, my partner and I just did our own things so we each just worked through all the exercises on our own. I was really grateful we were in agreement with doing the workout this way so neither of us was feeling pressured to go faster than we could. The first block had squats, hip hinge swings, and cross back lunges. The second block had reciprocating rows and bicycle presses. And the last block had clean to front squats and side plank rotations. I did my best with all the exercises, but I was moving pretty slowly and had to go lighter with the weights than I would have liked to. But I did it.

Thursday was probably my roughest day, and it wasn’t great that I was doing so poorly this morning because it was also a benchmark class. It was supposed to be the 1-mile benchmark (or 4 miles on the bike). I usually love challenging myself with benchmarks, and I’ve had some really nice improvements with this one. But I knew this would not be the day to be even close to a PR. I just had to get through the workout the best I could.

For cardio, we were just focused on the benchmark. I set the resistance level on the bike to be just below my normal base pace level to try to pedal as fast as I could. I knew I was not going to go as fast as I did the last few times, but I was hoping I would get at least a bit close to some of my past times. But this benchmark did not go well for me. I really struggled to keep going and my pedaling was slower than what I normally do in a regular class. I knew I wasn’t going to be close to the time I was hoping for. And when I was done, I was over 2 minutes slower than my worst attempt in the past. Because I knew this wasn’t really a great benchmark and I was dealing with other circumstances, I didn’t track it in the Orangetheory tracker. I didn’t need to have this to try to do better in the future. I normally wouldn’t skip tracking, even if I did poorly, but this was so much worse than I expected and it didn’t even feel like I was doing a benchmark.

On the rower, we were supposed to start with a 600-meter row followed by crisscross jacks and butt kicks. Then repeat the pattern and decrease the row by 100 meters each time. I knew I couldn’t really do the exercises, so I spent those 14 minutes just rowing as much as I could and taking breaks when I needed to. I really don’t like modifying the workout as much as this, but I knew that’s how I needed to manage this workout with how I was feeling. I wasn’t rowing that fast, but I tried to be consistent with my efforts when I was rowing and managed to keep the wattage pretty steady.

On the floor, we had one block and we were supposed to focus on going slowly and taking our time with each exercise, so I liked that. We had single-arm reverse flys, chest flys, step-downs, and single-leg deadlifts to knee raises. I had to do lunges instead of the step-downs and hold on to the wall for the deadlifts to knee raises, but those are normal modifications for me. And because we were supposed to take our time with the exercises, I didn’t feel too bad about how slowly I did each one and just focused on making sure I wasn’t doing anything that would aggravate my nausea. It wasn’t the best way to end the week, but I was glad I made it through.

Even with how poorly I did in several of the workouts this past week, I still am proud of myself with how I did. I listened to my body and made sure I didn’t do things that made the situation worse for me. This week might be another tough week for me, but I’ll just have to see how I feel each day going into class. Hopefully, but the end of the week I’m feeling a bit more normal, but if not, then the week after should be better. It’s an annoying part of my life that these bad weeks affect things so much, but I always make it through and it makes the good weeks even better.

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Surviving My Workout Week (or I Knew It Would Be Bad, But Not This Bad) This Is The Workout Week I Expected (or I Knew It Would Be A Bad Week) A Bad Workout Week For A Different Reason (or I Guess I Was Too Optimistic) Back To My Regular Schedule (I’m Glad My Bad Week Didn’t Start Until This Week) My Normal Bad Workout Week (or At Least This Is What I’m Used To) A Short Workout Week (or I Guess I’m Glad This Happened On A Bad Week)