Tag Archives: challenge

Bringing More Good Things To Me And Others (or Happiness and Self-Care)

Posted on March 1, 2019 | Comments Off on Bringing More Good Things To Me And Others (or Happiness and Self-Care)

I have had some very good monthly challenges in the past, but I’ve been feeling really good about the ones I’ve been working on for this year. I still may change things up as the year goes on, but I’ve been really focused on finding things that I think will really be beneficial. I don’t want them to just be something I can easily do or not think about. And I want the thoughts about them to all be good things and not annoyed that I need to do them.

My challenge for February was to put more positive things on Twitter. I became aware of how much news related stuff I was posting online and most of the time the news I posted was negative or scary. I don’t want to hide from the realities of the world, but I also don’t want that to be my only focus. I know I have always enjoyed to see positive posts that other people share on social media, and I wanted to do the same.

This ended up being a very easy thing for me to accomplish. I set an alarm on my phone like I have for so many other things to remind me to do a positive tweet. I usually did it before the alarm went off, but it’s always good to have the reminder. I also created a Twitter list of accounts that post positive things so it was easy for me to find something to share every day. And I loved having that list because I did use it for more than just finding what I wanted to share online. When I was having a down moment, it was a great resource to have to cheer myself up. I did find this challenge benefitted me as well as other people who saw it on my Twitter feed. And I plan to keep this up indefinitely because I liked the results it had.

This month my challenge will be something that will only benefit me, but it’s ok to have a selfish challenge from time to time. And this one is related to self-care which is something I have been working on for quite a while. I’ve been getting better at finding regular acts of self-care that I can do, but I know there are so many more things I can do that will make me feel better about myself.

I’ve been pretty good about skincare when it comes to my face. I haven’t always been amazing, but lately I’ve been really on top of things. I know this had to do with having the stitches in my face and having to be so careful with washing my face and taking care of the incision. I also love using different products on my face when I find something that isn’t quite right. I have a few different masks depending on my skin’s condition at the time and I also have different spot treatment options when I need them.

I know that skincare for your face is usually what you think about when you hear the word skincare. And honestly, I’ve been like that too. But I’ve been ignoring the rest of my skin and I’ve noticed that it’s starting to show. Growing up, I know I wasn’t as good about putting lotion on my body as I was for my face. I don’t know why I just didn’t do it, but I didn’t think about doing it. I’m much better about it now, but I know that just using lotion isn’t enough for my skin.

I do use special soap on my skin and I’m lucky that it doesn’t dry my skin out. And I have some lotions that I like and they seem to help. But I still have skin issues that aren’t managed just by washing and moisturizing my skin. I have dry skin issues and uneven skin issues too. I haven’t really looked into what I could do to fix those things before, but I’m feeling motivated to do it now.

I’m not totally sure of all the skincare things I want to do for my body, but I want to get myself into a better skincare routine. I got a dry brush a long time ago as a swag bag item and I’ve never used it before. I don’t know if using it every day will be right for me, but I want to try using it regularly so I can figure out how often I should dry brush. I also want to look into the lotions that I use and see if there is a better option for me. I have tried in-shower lotions before and I love the idea of them. But they haven’t been right for me. But I’ve been hearing about new in-shower lotion options that might be better and I know that putting lotion on immediately after showering is best (and I definitely wait too long after showering to put on lotion).

I don’t think there are masks that I would be using on my body, but I want to research other things I can do. Maybe there are things that I’m not doing correctly or skipping out on that can make a big different in the appearance and feel of my skin. I know that I’m starting from having things seem pretty decent so far, so I’m not expecting a huge difference. But I also know having the ritual of different self-care practices can be a lot more for mental health than physical health.

This will be an interesting challenge to do this month because I’m actually starting the month out-of-town (more on that next week). I don’t know how many things I will be able to do when I’m not home, but that could be good time to do some research. And hopefully by the end of the month I will have a good skincare routine I can share with you all and I will feel like my skin is looking better.

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Finding My Strength (or Continuing To Find New Ways To Push Myself)

Posted on February 4, 2019 | 1 comment

After having a tough week of workouts with weird injuries, I was so grateful to be back to normal (or at least my normal) this past week. I still had struggles with the usual things in my workout, but I had some amazing moments as well. I was able to find some ways to focus on what I could do on the floor instead of what I did on the bike and I feel like that really made me feel amazing.

Monday’s workout was a mix of endurance, strength, and power and while it felt like a typical workout is was also a tough one. I was feeling a little off for a few different reasons when I got to class, but when I saw the workout I was pretty excited about it. There have been so many unique workouts lately but it’s always nice to have a classic class.

For cardio, the first block was 3 rounds of a 90 second push pace and a 45 second base pace ending with a 30 second all out. The second block switched things so it was 45 second push paces and 90 second base paces ending with an all out. I struggled a bit with my normal resistance levels on the bike, but I did use them. And the last block was with inclines so we had 4 different all out paces with different hill/resistance levels. I was getting a bit higher than my typical all out level, but it wasn’t quite as high as some of the other hill work I have done in the past.

On the floor, we had Bosu work and rowing. The first block was tricep extensions with weights while kneeling on the Bosu and push-ups with one hand on the Bosu and one hand on the ground. And after 3 rounds of those we had a 100 meter row. The second block was chest fly with weights while laying on the Bosu and low rows using the straps for 2 rounds and then a 200 meter row. And the last block was pullovers with weights and back extensions which were both done while laying on the Bosu and then a 400 meter row after 1 round. I had a little bit of a struggle with the back extensions while laying on my stomach so I had to take those slow. But I also know that going slow also can mean that I’m working harder and have better form so I think it worked to my advantage.

Wednesday’s workout was the Orange X workout, where we try to go as heavy as possible with weights. It was a 3 group class so I had a block on the bike and rower before I got to do the Orange X challenge. We were advised to go a bit easy to save our strength for the floor work, but I was already going easy on myself because I was nauseous.

The first block on the bike was rounds of push paces to base paces with the time going down each time. The second block on the bike was the same except every segment was half of the time we had in the first block. The first block on the rower was rounds of 400 meter rows with chest presses and shoulder presses with a medicine ball between each round. And the second block on the rower was rounds of 200 meter rows and we were supposed to do lunges between each round. But I was not feeling so great so I just stayed on the rower for that entire block.

The Orange X challenge is all about doing single arm low rows, goblet squats, and chest presses with the heaviest weight you can use. I’ve always surprised myself with the weights I could use during these challenges and I was determined to try to improve again. The only one that I knew it couldn’t really improve on just yet is the chest press because I already struggle a lot with the heavy weight I use for that and I don’t want to hurt myself. I actually probably should have gone down to a lower weight because it was harder than I was ok with. I don’t like having the weights above my body when I am scared that I might drop them.

But I knew that I could improve with the low rows and goblet squats. In the past, I’ve used 35lbs for that (I may have used 40lb weight once but I don’t believe so). This time, I decided to go big and go for 45lbs. It was much heavier than I’m used to and I couldn’t do 10 reps in a row without a break, but I did get them done. And with the goblet squats I know we are always pushed to do so much more than we already do. I’ve used 45lbs before and it seemed amazing but I know I can do more. I did one round with 60lbs but when I was on the floor for the second block all the 60lb weights were gone so I went up one higher and managed to do the squats with 65lbs! The most difficult part is holding the weight in my hands and not the squat, but I still felt it in my legs and butt. It was hard and I was exhausted when I was done, but I did it!

After the heavy weightlifting on Wednesday, I was just on such a workout high. I knew I could push myself more on the floor and I needed to find moments to do that. I didn’t have as many opportunities to do that as I would have liked, but it also gave me an extra boost of motivation to work on tracking my floor work more because I need to find a way to know if I’m making progress or stuck using the same weights for months.

Friday’s workout was a mix of endurance, strength, and power and we spend 15 minutes on each section of the room without switching. For the cardio portion, we started with endurance work with a 6 minute distance challenge. I don’t reset the bike too often because it’s not as quick as resetting the treadmill, so I didn’t focus too much on the distance. Instead, I worked on increasing how fast I pedaled while keeping the bike resistance at my push pace level. The second block was power based and we had 2 rounds of 45 second all out paces. And the last block was a 3 minute distance challenge with extra resistance. The goal was to do half the distance we did in the 6 minute challenge, but I focused more on not slowing down the bike.

The rower focus followed the same pattern as the cardio. For the endurance part, we started with a 400 meter row and we went down 100 meters each round. And between each row, we had 12 frogger squats. The power row was the same as the treadmill with 2 rounds of 45 second all out paces. And the last block was do to half the row distance and half the frogger squats each round (starting with a 200 meter row and going down 50 meters each time with 6 squats).

The floor was one long block. We had deadlifts, dumbbell swings, weighted lunges, regular lunges, and sit-ups. I usually use 25lb weights for my deadlifts and 20lb or 25lb for my swings. But I couldn’t get a 25lb weight since other people were using them. I didn’t want to go to a lower weight since I just proved to myself I could do better, so I went with a set of 30lb weights. The deadlifts and swings weren’t easy with the heavier weight and my hands need to get use to holding them, but I did it. I used lighter weights for my weighted lunges since I have balance issues doing those, but that didn’t feel like a letdown after doing the heavier ones. I was just so happy to prove to myself again that I can do more than I had been trying.

Saturday’s workout was a power day, and it was a very intense power day! We had 3 groups, but the treadmills (or me on the bike) and the rowers worked together in a run/row type format. The plan was the same for 3 rounds each time, it just changed which part of it you started with.

They were all 4 minute blocks. The first 2 minutes had the cardio side doing a 30 second push pace, 30 second base pace, and 1 minute all out. The first 2 minutes on the rowers was a 200 meter row, 20 squats, and the rowing for distance if there was time. Then the cardio side went to the rowers and the rowers went to the cardio side and both had a 1 minute all out. I did that 4 minute block 6 different times (3 when I started on the bike and 3 when I started on the rower), and it was hard! Because of how the class rotated, I did all 6 blocks back to back instead of having 3 and then the floor block before the next 3. But I was glad to get it all done and I tried to catch my breath as much as possible when switching from the bike to the rower or the other way around.

On the floor, we had 1 long block. We had single arm snatches, low rows on the straps, squats, sit-up rotations with weights, and running men. I used my normal weights for the weighted work because I was so tired from all the cardio work. I knew my form was probably going to be sloppy and I didn’t want to risk hurting myself with trying a new and heavier weight. I stuck with focusing on my form and taking the breaks where I needed them. And I really did need them a lot on the floor!

One of my workout goals this year was to track my floor work better. We are already through 1/12 of the year and I’ll be honest that I haven’t been good at trying to figure this out. I’m still struggling with how to do it, but I’m just trying to write it down somewhere for now. I don’t want this year to fly by and I realize I am using the same weights that I’ve been using all year. I have shown myself that I need to work harder because I can do it. And I can only work harder if I know what I have done before.

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A Social Media Monthly Challenge (or Wanting To Put Some Positivity Into The World)

Posted on February 1, 2019 | Comments Off on A Social Media Monthly Challenge (or Wanting To Put Some Positivity Into The World)

My monthly challenges are typically things that I do to better myself or improve my life in some way. I see them as a way to grow and to challenge myself with something that I might have been scared to do before. Doing something for a month isn’t a huge time commitment and I’ve almost always been pleasantly surprised that I end up wanting those challenges to be a part of my every day life moving forward.

Last month’s challenge was one that I set to work on bettering myself. I did a little bit of online learning every day. I had such high hopes for this challenge and what good things I would be able to add to my skill set. But I think my expectations were a bit too high. While I did enjoy doing the online classes, it felt more like I was sampling the classes and seeing what the subject was about instead of learning. I think maybe my expectations were high because I have done online classes at community colleges before when I just wanted to learn a subject (it’s a pretty cheap thing to do). And these online classes I found for free weren’t the same.

I also might have been doing more sampling of different subjects instead of just focusing hard on one thing. Maybe if I was focused on learning everything that I could about one thing, I would have felt differently. I’m not upset or disappointed about the challenge I did in January, I just had a different end result from what I thought I’d have. But I am grateful that I found so many amazing free online education services because I am going to continue to take advantage of them. I don’t know if it will be a daily thing, but it will be something I turn to when I need to learn more about a subject or want to add a skill set. I might have to build upon the free classes with something I pay for, but it will at least be a start.

But for February, I’m going to make the challenge a bit more than just something  for me. While this will benefit me, it will hopefully also benefit other people as well.

I’m a fairly active user of social media. While I don’t always post things to make my life look amazing, I do keep a lot of it positive. Mainly, I think I keep things positive on Instagram and Facebook. I know that I post real and tough things on there too, but it’s easily a mix of good and bad. But on Twitter, I’ve noticed that I have posted more negative or serious things.

I’m sure that’s happening because it’s very easy to share someone else’s post on Twitter. I can retweet from so many different sources with a simple click and I do follow a lot of more serious accounts. And I feel like the serious things that I’m sharing are important things like political issues that I’m passionate about. If I see a problem or misleading information that can harm others, I make sure I express my opinion. Social media is designed to do just that.

But because I share so much serious stuff like politics or news, I feel like I don’t balance it out with more positive things. I do share good things from time to time when I do my daily tweets about my union, but I don’t do a lot of random happiness or silly posts. And when I do post them, like this tweet about my grandma and my aunt and uncle’s new puppy, I always feel good for putting something out there that can make someone smile.

I’ve also done text messages to friends who I know are going through a tough time with silly photos or videos saying that they are to be used when they need a cuteness break. And realizing how happy doing those texts make me has inspired my challenge for this month (and hopefully beyond since I think this is one that I will keep up).

I want to share something on Twitter every day that is just to share positivity or to make someone smile. It might be something I created myself or a photo I took and it might be just me retweeting something that makes me happy from another account. There are a bunch of accounts I can follow that post only things like that and I’m going to use those as a resource to retweet when I don’t have something of my own to share.

While this might not balance out all the serious things I post, it will help. And you never know when someone scrolling through your feed is needing that random smile. Posting something every day is a pretty simple effort but it can have a big impact if it gets to the right person at the right time. And there is a good chance that I will be the person that needs the mood boost from time to time and sharing something online will be benefitting me more than anyone else.

This should be a pretty easy challenge for me to do because I can create a list of good accounts to retweet from as well as set a reminder for myself to post something. I’ve gotten so used to doing my daily union tweets so this will be adding on to that habit.

But just because it’s easy it doesn’t mean that it won’t affect me. I’m excited to know that I’ll be putting more good and positivity into the world every day and I can’t wait to see how much happier I will be by the end of the month!

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My First Challenge Of 2019 (or Planning And Education)

Posted on January 3, 2019 | Comments Off on My First Challenge Of 2019 (or Planning And Education)

Another post about the beginning of the year! This time, it’s about my monthly challenge for January so technically it’s not just about the beginning of the year. I’m in my 4th year of using the Volt Planner and the monthly challenges and I’m really excited to see what I’m able to get done this year!

My challenge for December was to plan for my challenges this year. I had some very abstract challenges in 2018 and it became easy to slack off on doing them because of that. Maybe I needed a bit of a break from my monthly challenges, but I wanted to get back at it in 2019. So I went easy on myself again in December and used that month to plan for the future. I have seen so many lists of ideas for monthly challenges and my plan was to check out a bunch of lists and pick out the ones that seemed good for the coming year.

While I did look at a ton of lists and see some amazing ideas, I wasn’t able to plan the way I hoped to. I think part of the monthly challenges is to see what inspires you and what you want to work on at that time. To plan out what I want my challenge to be several months from now just doesn’t work for me the way I was hoping it would. I found lots of challenges that I liked, but I didn’t decide what months they are going to be for. But I’m hopeful that by having a list of options available to me that it will be easier for me to pick challenges each month.

And for this month’s challenge, it was inspired by my circumstances and not exactly by the list I found. I mentioned this briefly in my 2019 goals post, but my challenge for this month is to take different free online classes. There are a bunch of different websites I have access to for free through the LA Public Library system, but I have decided to start with the classes I can find on lynda.com. I’ve heard good things about that site through other people who have used it and it seemed to have a good variety of classes I could take.

I spent a few days last week going through the site and seeing what options I have and I picked out a bunch of different ones. Some of them are related to making this blog better, some of them are job skills that I’d like to brush up on, and others are jobs skills that I don’t have but think could be good for me to know with my current jobs search. The plan is to work on a lesson for a bit every day and to get through whatever I can. I might be able to finish some in a day if they are fast, but I don’t want to have to set a rule for how quickly I need to get something done. If I’m learning a new skill, I want to allow myself time to figure it out and understand it before I move on.

I do feel like this goal has a couple of benefits for me. First, like I mentioned above, is that adding new skills to my job resume might help me in my job search. Things were slow with job hunting during the holidays but they are picking up again and I want to find a new job as soon as I can. I’m not happy being this stressed out about money and what will happen. I have had some interviews and second phases of applications, but I’m hoping now that the holidays are done that I will get more and maybe a job offer soon. And the second benefit I see this having for me is that it will help me be more productive during the downtime at my current job. I don’t want to waste my days doing things that won’t help me in the long run, and taking classes online is a great way to stay productive!

I’m pretty excited about this challenge and seeing what other classes I might want to add to my list as I go through them. It seems like there are a ton of options in so many subjects, plus I also have a few other online class sites I can use for free through the library that I can move to if I don’t find more through lynda.com. I’m also happy that I found something that is free since a few different educational things that I do are apps that have an annual cost. Anything I can find for free is good and I want to take advantage of them!

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An Almost End Of The Year Review (or Looking Back At My Goals)

Posted on December 28, 2018 | 1 comment

I know there are still a few more days left in the year, but I wanted to get my end of the year recap done before the new year started. I feel like it’s a nice transition to have a clean break from year to year and I didn’t necessarily want to spend the beginning of the new year going through the past. So I figured with a few days left I would have a good idea on where I would stand with my goals by the end of the year.

My first goal I had this year was to do 199 Orangetheory workouts. That one I accomplished and I’ll finish out the year with a few more! I should be at 206 workouts by the last day of the year unless something happens that prevents me from going to one of my planned workouts. But even if I didn’t go for those classes, I will still be ahead of the goal! I did 4 workouts a week almost every week which made it easy to make it to over 199. I thought I’d have more 3 workout weeks over the year but I didn’t have that many. I tried to look back at my schedule and I don’t think I had any 5 workout weeks (I could be wrong) which is what I thought I’d need to do a few times to make sure I made it to my goal. I’m so glad that this goal ended up being relatively easy to accomplish since it seemed like one that would be tough for me.

And I’m lucky that first goal was easy for me to accomplish because it ended up being the only goal I really did accomplish that I had set for myself. I don’t want to make excuses for myself, but for some of these goals I didn’t meet there is a reason. But I still need to hold myself accountable for why I didn’t do what I was hoping to do.

The next 2 goals I had are somewhat related. I wanted to find a 5K race to do and I wanted to get a new PR on my mile time. Neither of those happened and if I’m being totally honest I really don’t care too much that they didn’t happen. Doing 5K races was a big part of my life for a long time, but that was also a while ago. I didn’t have Orangetheory when I did a bunch of races every year and I think having a regular workout has made me not feel as motivated to find races. I had a few races that I kept doing, but once they stopped having races each year I didn’t try to find a replacement. And with wanting to get a new mile PR time, I really thought I’d be able to do much more running this year than I have been able to do. This is due to multiple factors like getting sick, my hormonal nausea, and other things that have prevented me from using the treadmill as much as I wanted to do. Getting a new mile PR used to be so important to me and a sign of my progress, but I’ve had to learn new ways to measure my progress and the mile time has lost some of the importance it used to have.

The next goal I failed on is one that I feel like I have the most excuses for. I had a number in my head that I wanted to get my debt below. I was making real progress toward this for the first part of the year and I was so excited about it. But then I didn’t have as many hours with one of my jobs as I thought I would have and then that job wasn’t able to offer me a new contract like we expected. Being down one job meant that I didn’t have the money to put toward paying my credit card that I used to and I had to start using my credit card for more things than I would have liked to. Losing a job and using my credit card to pay for regular expenses is how I got into debt. I’m trying to stop this before it gets as bad as it did before (and I’ll have more on that in my 2019 goals), but it did increase how much I owed on the card. It’s unfortunate, but it’s my reality. I wasn’t expecting to lose a job and I don’t make enough money right now to really have savings to cover a job loss. I know this is bad and I want to fix this, but for now I have to just focus on finding a new job so I can get back to paying down my debt.

And my last goal I had for 2018 was to keep doing what I’ve been doing with my eating disorder recovery. While I wouldn’t say I necessarily failed at accomplishing this, but it didn’t go the way I planned it would. I did keep doing what I was doing and I’ve found new things that do work for me and I’ve dropped things that I found weren’t working for me anymore. I had the hope that I would feel like I made more progress by this point, but I also know that recovery is a weird journey and it’s not always easy to judge progress.

Even though I really only accomplished one of my goals I set for the year, I don’t see that necessarily as a bad thing. Instead, I feel like I had a minor failure to plan with my goals which is a newer issue for me. I think I need to allow myself to alter and change my goals throughout the year. If I had that as the plan, I would have switched out my running related goals before the year was half over to something else that was fitness related. Maybe I would have had a goal to be able to use a certain weight for an exercise or I would have changed it to a goal on the rower or bike. But I felt like my goals were set for the year and I didn’t want to alter them. That is something I will be changing as well as adding to my monthly challenge planning reminder to look back at my goals for the year to see what steps I need to make and if there are any changes that should happen.

It’s so funny to think about how happy I am to have goals I failed at because it has given me a lot of insight into myself and how I can make the next year even better. And I’ve got some interesting goals in mind for 2019 that I’ll be sharing next week that have been inspired by me not reaching my goals. Sometimes you need a setback to help you think clearly and I think that’s exactly what I had this year.

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Working Through A Rough Week (or Just Keep Moving)

Posted on December 17, 2018 | 1 comment

I knew this week of workouts would be a rough one for me. I am glad that I can plan for these weeks so they don’t take me by surprise, but it doesn’t necessarily make them easier to deal with. But I just have to continue trying new things that might help my workouts (and my life) not as hard and hope for the best. And that’s the attitude I really tried to go into these workouts with.

Monday’s workout was a strength day and I knew that while I couldn’t pedal as hard on the bike as normal that didn’t mean I couldn’t try to work hard. Since there was incline/resistance work for the cardio, I went with increasing my resistance levels on the bike as the incline work was happening on the treadmill. I didn’t get quite as high on the resistance levels as I have before, but I was still doing more than my normal levels.

We had 3 blocks on cardio and the first block was 1 minute intervals between incline/resistance work and a base pace. Each incline went lower as we went through the blocks, so I started the resistance level at close to the highest that I have done to represent hill work. I went down 1 level each time but I was still above my normal resistance levels the entire block. The second block was 1 minute intervals with incline/resistance work and push paces. During this block, I was getting closer to my normal resistance levels but decided to not go below my all out resistance level for hill work. And the last block was 1 minute intervals with push and base paces and I used my normal resistance levels for these.

On the floor, every block had 2 exercises plus a row challenge. The exercises included lunges, shoulder presses, single leg squats, hip hinge reverse fly, uppercuts, and bicep curls. Each block had 1 exercise that was 6 reps and the other exercises we could choose between 6-10 reps. The idea was to be able to try heavier weights and have the option to do fewer reps. Because of how I was feeling, I did heavy weights but nothing I hadn’t done before. And the row challenge each block was to do 15 stokes slowly on the rower and see how far you could get. It’s not easy to row slowly and that’s the point of this challenge. We were supposed to get at least 150 meters each time, and I managed to do over 200 meters each time. So I guess my nausea was good for something.

Wednesday’s workout was a power class and even though it’s normally not a 3 group class it was this time. So I was at each section of the room for about 15 minutes. On the bike, we had short push to all out challenges and then we had squats right after. We did 5 rounds of push to all outs that got shorter throughout the block and the squats started at 12 reps and went down 1 each time. I wasn’t pedaling as fast as I could on the bike, but I tried my best and tried to work harder during the all outs than I was working during the push paces.

On the rower, we started with a 500 meter row and each round it went down 100 meters. And between the rows we had more squats plus squats to front presses with a medicine ball. We kept working down for the number of reps we did for the regular squats, so I started at 8 squats after my 500 meter row. My rowing time was slow, but it was steady and consistent so I tried to look at that as a good thing.

And on the floor, we had 1 long block that had 4 exercises plus continuing to work down on the number of reps for the squats. We had sumo squats with weights, dumbbell swings, weighted hip bridges, and crunches. The goal by the end of class was to be at the round of doing 1 squat (so you worked from 12 down to 1), but I didn’t quite make it. I did my round of 2 squats and was working on the other exercises by the time class was done. But considering how awful I was feeling in class, getting within a few exercises of making it to the goal is a big accomplishment.

Friday’s workout was a strength day and I was cautiously optimistic that my nausea was over. I was feeling pretty good when I woke up and went to the workout, but when I got on the bike it was only a few minutes before I was feeling nauseous again. But since I had planned for this week to be like this, it did make things a bit easier. Plus, as I’ve mentioned before I do like using the bike for strength days because I can add resistance on the bike much more than I can do incline work on the treadmill.

The cardio blocks were all pretty short and they combined having push work without hills and push work with hills. I was using my normal resistance levels on the bike when it wasn’t hill work but I went to the new higher resistance levels I’ve been using for the hill work. I didn’t get as high up there as I have in past workouts, but the hill work wasn’t as high as it has been in other workouts so that seemed reasonable to me.

On the rower, we had an interesting workout where we got to determine how many reps of exercises we would do by how we did with the rowing. We had different distances to row and we had to count the number of strokes it took us to get to that distance (very similarly to us having to count the strokes in Monday’s class and see the distance we could get). I know that I can do long and slow rowing and that helps to keep my stroke count down. After the first row we had calf raises, after the second row we had squats, and after the third row we had squat presses. I know that my number of reps was much lower than our coach was expecting us to do since I focused on rowing as slowly as possible. But I still had a lot of reps of everything.

And on the floor we had 2 blocks. The first block had deadlifts, double crunches, and bench sit-up to stands. I couldn’t do the sit-up to stands because of the nausea so I just did regular full sit-ups. And the second block had hip hinge high rows, hammer curls, sit-ups, and lunges. Fortunately the majority of the floor exercises that we had were things that weren’t an issue with my nausea, so by the end of the workout I was feeling almost back to how I was feeling before the workout.

Saturday’s workout was a benchmark day. We had the 2000 meter row which is the longest benchmark row that we have. It’s not an easy distance to do, but I’ve done it enough to have a good idea of goals I’d like to accomplish. My PR is significantly faster than I’ve been able to do any other time (I have no idea how I did the row so quickly that one time), so I don’t go into that row expecting to get a new PR. But I still try to do better than other rows so I can feel accomplished.

I started out on the bike where we had a short cardio block with a push pace and ending with an all out. Then we went to the floor to do some skater lunges, woodchoppers with the medicine ball, and lunges with tricep extensions with the medicine ball. I was trying to go easy on the floor work since I knew I’d have the 2000 meter row right after that, but I was going harder than I thought so toward the end of the block I took a break so I could catch my breath.

When I got to the rower, my goal was to see if I could do the row in under 9 minutes. It’s not easy to do that, and I was still feeling a bit off, but I was determined to do my best. What we are told to do with long rows like this is to start with 5 really hard pulls on the rower to get the water moving, then work on finding a steady pace we can maintain for the entire time. I knew if I wanted to be under 9 minutes that my 500 meter split time needed to stay under 2:15. I was able to do that in the beginning, but I was tiring out quickly. So instead of going at that pace as long as I could and then slowing down a lot, I found a pace I could stick with and just had to be ok with not making my goal. I ended up finishing about 15 seconds slower than I wanted to, but I was able to do the entire row without stopping.

After the row was done, we had blocks where we had short cardio bursts with lunges between each burst. I was on the bike and only made it through 2 rounds. I had to take time to recover after my row and that cut into my cardio time. And the last short block on the floor was lunges and superman work, which was easy enough to do even though I was so tired.

While this past week of workouts weren’t record breaking or amazing, I did try to stay in the mindset that I was doing something good. I think I found a small victory in all of my workouts even if that victory was a part of not reaching a goal I had earlier. I should hopefully be back to my normal workout for the next 2 weeks, so I should be finishing my 2018 workouts with some awesome workout days!

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Default ThumbnailA Good, Strong Workout Week (or I Really Love Feeling Like Myself) Default ThumbnailA Week Of Nauseous Workouts (or Just Doing My Best) Default ThumbnailAn Emotional Workout Week (or Just Making It Through) Default ThumbnailBack To My Normal Routine (or Working Through My Workouts) Default ThumbnailNot Exactly A Recovery Week (or Working With Different Challenges) Default ThumbnailAn Up And Down Week (or Working Through The Same Frustrations)

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Recapping A Few Challenges From Last Month (or Getting Ready Stop Going Easy On Myself)

Posted on December 4, 2018 | Comments Off on Recapping A Few Challenges From Last Month (or Getting Ready Stop Going Easy On Myself)

I usually would just be doing my monthly challenge recap in this post and then announce my next monthly challenge, but I’m going to do things a bit differently this time. I’m going to recap 2 challenges I had last month and that will lead into what my challenge will be for this month.

First, last month I challenged myself to work on getting back to feeling like myself. I knew that I was feeling a bit lost and not like myself and I wanted to find what I needed to do in order to feel that way again. It was another challenge that wasn’t easy to track so I looked at it as a goal for the month versus a challenge.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that in the middle of the month I actually forgot what my challenge was. It wasn’t something I had to think about every day or had a reminder to do, so it was easy to forget about it. I tried to put a positive spin on it and say that I must be back to myself if I wasn’t focused on doing that anymore. And I do feel like I’m back to being me and I’m very happy about that. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that I really didn’t have to do much for this challenge and it really was kind of a wash.

I also had a challenge last month to participate in NaNoWriMo again and to get up to date on all my online dating stories. I hadn’t done a lot of work on the book since last year and I had a lot of stories to add. I started off on a great note with getting chapter names for all the new stories, writing a few of the stories down that I hadn’t done yet, and updating the few stories that have had changes or new updates. I knew that I wasn’t going to hit the word count goal for NaNoWriMo since my stories aren’t necessarily that long, but I wanted to work on the book until I was current on it.

But after that initial motivation and got a few things done, I did nothing else with it last month. I am glad that I wrote down the stories that I want to write because there were a few that I had forgotten about. I plan on writing more stories than I probably would actually have in a book so I have options. It’s better to have to edit a book and stories down than to need to find more to add because it’s too short. There’s no real good excuse for why I didn’t work on my book more other than I was lazy and just didn’t do it. I had the time between my customers at work on work on them and it wouldn’t have taken that much time. I just didn’t do it and I am a bit upset with myself that I just let that go and didn’t work on it like I planned to do.

From both the book and my monthly challenges being kind of a fail and I went easy on myself for not really doing much, I knew I needed to make a change. My monthly challenges used to be real challenges that pushed me and made me work toward a change in my life. I haven’t kept all of the monthly challenges as a part of my life, but many of them are still daily habits that I enjoy and know benefit me.

So technically my challenge for this month is another one that will be easy to slack on, but it will be better for me in the long run. My challenge this month is to plan my monthly challenges for 2019. I would love to have a list of at least 16 challenges so I have some options to use next year. I want to pick things that can be tracked and measured so I am held accountable to them. And I want to pick things that will truly challenge me and hopefully make me a better version of myself. I’m hoping I can find a good mix of physical challenges (like stretching and yoga), educational challenges (like how I’m working on learning French), and mental challenges (like my meditation challenge that I’m over 900 days into). I know having a mix will be the best thing for me and will help me not feel too overwhelmed.

I know that this month is another challenge I can slack on and not make an effort every day toward, but it’s the first step in making sure that I break this bad habit and have some amazing challenges in the new year!

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Back To My Normal Workouts (or Another Challenge Switch)

Posted on December 3, 2018 | Comments Off on Back To My Normal Workouts (or Another Challenge Switch)

After having a shorter workout week the week before, I was happy to be back to my normal workout schedule this past week. My workouts are one of the few super routine and regular parts of my life and when things switch up it feels weird. I know that normally happens around the holidays, but I’m still not used to it. So getting back to my regular schedule was really nice.

Monday’s workout was a strength day, but the inclines on the treadmill were going to be pretty limited so I was going to use the treadmill. I had such a great running day on Saturday the week before and I was excited to keep that going. But I don’t know if it was being of my great running day, the heavy weights I used for squats, or something else but I was seriously struggling on the treadmill. My legs felt like they were so heavy and I had a hard time moving as quickly as I needed to. So I jumped off the treadmill right after the warmup (when I was taking breaks every 30 seconds of so) and went to the bike.

All of our blocks had push paces at no added incline/resistance, push paces at added incline/resistance, and all out paces with no incline for the treadmills with base paces in between. For the base, push, and all out paces with no added incline I used my regular resistance levels on the bike. But for all the incline work, I went to the new higher resistance levels that I had been using recently. Even though we had recovery between all of the all outs, this felt almost like an endurance workout and I was working hard!

On the floor, we had 1 long block but we also had rowing. When we started, we had a 250 meter row and then went to the floor to work on skier swings, uppercuts, deadlifts, high rows using the straps, bicep curls, and plank low rows. The exercises were grouped into 3 mini-blocks each with 2 exercises and we did 3 rounds of each mini-block before moving on. But every time the treadmill had an all out we went back to the rower for another 250 meter row so we did a total of 1,000 meters in the workout. I was using medium heavy weights for all the weighted work and made it through all the exercises by the time class was done so I was very happy with my floor work. Plus, I was able to get my 250 meter row faster every time I did it.

Wednesday’s workout was a signature workout. It’s called Go Row and it is all about timed rowing. Even though I started on the treadmill for my warmup, my group went to the floor first. But since it was a switch class I didn’t feel too weird doing my rowing and treadmill work second with each block.

For the rowing/treadmill blocks, we started on the rower every time. The first block was a 4 minute row, the second block a 2 minute row, and the last block a 1 minute row. The goal was to do at least half of what you did the previous row, and I did much better than half every time. After the rows we went to the treadmill for a quick treadmill workout. The first block was just a push to an all out, the second block was a longer push to a base to an all out, and the last block was another longer push to a base to an all out. I walked my base and push paces but did run all of the all outs. There was so little time on the treadmill that I did want to maximize my time on there so I’m glad I got some running done.

On the floor we had a lot of work using the Bosu. The first block was supposed to be plank leg lifts and knee tucks using the Bosu and I tried doing those at first but it wasn’t working for me. So I did my plank leg lifts on the ground and did sit-ups on the Bosu instead of knee tucks. The second block was running men, hip hinge tricep kickbacks, and single leg V ups on the Bosu. I switched the single leg V ups to sit-ups again due to my hips. And the last block was lateral shoulder raises while kneeling on the Bosu and back extensions on the Bosu and I was able to do both of those exactly how we were coached to do them.

Friday’s workout was another strength day, but it was a 3 group class and the format looked like a good one to do on the treadmill so I skipped using the bike. On the treadmill, we had 3 blocks and they all had a push pace that was supposed to be at an incline and then an all out pace on a flat incline. So I decided to do all the push pace incline work as a power walker and the all out paces as a runner. The 1 minute all out paces did feel a bit long to me, but they were doable. And not worrying about using incline work while running was helpful. Even though I have done a lot of 3 group classes, this seemed to be the quickest 3 group treadmill block I’ve ever had.

On the rower, we had 3 blocks as well and each block started with a distance row. The first block was 200 meters, the second block was 400 meters, and the last block was 600 meters. After the row we had squats using the medicine ball and then we rowed until the block ended. I did make it back to the rower every time and did about a minute of rowing at the end of each block. It was a lot of rowing which was helpful to finish my Orange Voyage challenge (I ended up rowing 24,854 meters in November).

And on the floor, we also had 3 blocks which focused a lot on lower body and abs. The first block had lunges, sit-ups, crunches, and leg raises. The second block added deadlifts to the exercises from the first block. And the last block skipped the abs but we added weighted squats to the lunges and deadlifts. The number of reps for each exercise was pretty low so we were encouraged to go very heavy with the weights. I didn’t go as heavy as I knew I could go because the heavy weight that I usually use for deadlifts was being used by other people and I didn’t want to go even heavier than I’ve ever done.

Saturday’s workout was a power day and the treadmill half of class was really fun! It started as a run/body weight exercise and then switched to a run/row. And it gave me a lot of opportunities to work on my running!

The first round was a .1 mile run and then squats. I ran the entire thing (even though it’s a bit longer than I have been running lately) and that felt awesome. The next round would have been a .2 mile run, but I did it as a run/walk with 45 second intervals and split the difference between the run distance and the walk distance. Then there were more squats. Next was another round where I did it as a run/walk and split the difference between the run and walk distances with more squats after it. Then the distance got longer and I switched to power walking only. After that round we had more squats and then the longest distance we had on the treadmill followed by 200 meters on the rower. I made it back to the treadmill to work on the next distance, but we switched before I finished the distance. I did 3 rounds of running (or run/walking) and 3 rounds of walking which felt pretty good!

On the floor, we had a very unique format. The first 12 days of December are a new challenge with themed workouts at Orangetheory and this one was all about working our way down from 12 reps to 1 rep. We had 4 blocks and each block had 2 exercises. We did exercise 1 for 12 reps, exercise 2 for 11 reps, exercise 1 for 10 reps, and so on. If we made it all the way down to 1 rep, we then held a plank until the block ended. The first block was plank shoulder taps and pop jacks. The second block was squats and hip hinge reverse flys. The third block was lunges and weighted triceps. And the last block was palms to elbows (which I did as plank shoulder taps) and sit-ups. I made it to doing the plank at the end for the second, third, and fourth blocks which is much more than I expected!

I’m excited for this week to see what the challenges will be in the workouts. I know they will be tough, but they aren’t as bad as Hell Week so I know I can do whatever they are!

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Not Exactly A Recovery Week (or Working With Different Challenges)

Posted on November 12, 2018 | Comments Off on Not Exactly A Recovery Week (or Working With Different Challenges)

After making it through Hell Week, I was thinking maybe the workouts would be a bit easier this past week. Even if they weren’t necessarily easier, I thought they’d feel easier than the Hell Week ones did. I don’t know if it was because I had some challenges this week or because the workouts weren’t as easy as I thought they would be, but this past week really had some tough workouts!

Monday’s workout was similar to a run/row format but it was more like run/do floor work/row if you have time. I didn’t make it to the rower each time, but I did get at least a little bit of rowing in to add to my total for the month.

On the treadmill we had 3 blocks. Each one had a run for distance, medicine ball squats to press, run for distance, more medicine ball squats to press, and then row until the block was done. Each block the distance on the treadmill went down which is why I made it to the rower for the second and third block. I power walked all the distances since I didn’t want to be too tired from running if I made it to the rower. Plus, since power walkers only do half the distance, I knew I’d have a better chance making it to the rower if I power walked half the distance over running the full distance. I didn’t get a lot of rowing done for those last 2 blocks, but it was at least a little something.

On the floor we also had 3 blocks. The first block was chest presses, lunges, and knee tucks. The second block was hip swings with weights, mountain climbers, and single arm chest presses. And the last block was push ups, running men, and rollouts using the straps. We didn’t have a ton of weight work, but I did go heavier than normal on my single arm chest press. I actually used the same weight that I did for the regular chest press which not what I normally do. But I think that is proof that my core is stronger since I wasn’t feeling off-balance.

Wednesday’s workout was all about rowing! I know this was done to help us get a lot of meters to add to our total for Orange Voyage, but it was more rowing that I feel like I have had in a long time! It was great to get to work on my rowing endurance, but I know that because we did so much that I wasn’t doing that great with my form. And this was a partner workout so I really worked hard to keep working so my partner wasn’t waiting on me for too long.

The first half of class was like a run/row. One partner was on the treadmill waiting for their partner to finish on the rower. On the rower, the first time we were on it we had a 1,000 meter row. The second time we were on the rower we had a 750 meter row. And the third time we were on the rower we had a 500 meter row. My partner was doing the 500 meter row (I had already done mine) when that block was done. When I was on the treadmill I was doing a power walk at my push incline to not go too easy on myself. But when I was on the rower I really tried to go hard so we could switch as quickly as possible.

The second half of class was a floor work/row block. The person on the floor controlled the switch while the person on the rower rowed until they were tagged out. On the floor we had single arm snatches, hip hinge single arm rows, knee tucks to push ups using the Ab Dolly, and crunches. I wasn’t going too heavy on the weight work since I had so much more rowing to do. My partner and I were pretty equally matched as far as timing goes on the floor work, so we were both on the rower for about the same time each round. In the end, I did just over 4,000 meters on the rower during the class!

Friday’s workout was a challenging one for me. First, I was dealing with nausea and that always affects my workouts. I wasn’t as nauseous as I have been before, but it was definitely making me off during most of the workout. But the second challenge we had was that we had to deal with a fire alarm going off! It was a false alarm so we were safe in the building, but for a couple of minutes we were working out to the sounds of the alarm. And after it stopped, the PA system in the studio was down for the first 20 minutes so we didn’t have any music and the coach had to yell so we could hear what to do. We were lucky that the fire alarm didn’t last that long and that the music eventually came back, but it really did make the workout feel different.

On the bike, we had 2 blocks. The first block started with a 1 minute push, 1 minute base, and 30 second all out. Then after we had recovery time we took out the base so we just had the push and all out. After another recovery we just had a 1 minute all out. The second block was the same but in reverse order (so starting with just the 1 minute push). I did use my normal resistance levels on the bike, but I was taking a lot of breaks and moving very slowly the entire time.

On the rower, the first block started with a 300 meter row and then 12 lunges. Then we did a 250 meter row and the lunges again. I was doing the 200 meter row when the time was called on that first block. The second block had the lunges between each row again but we started with a 100 meter row and went up 50 meters each time. Since I hadn’t done a lot of cardio work by going easy on the bike, I only did 2 rounds of the lunges and then stayed on the rower to finish out the block. I was still taking breaks, but I think I did more cardio work doing that than I would have if I did the lunges.

And on the floor, I had to make some modifications since I couldn’t do some of the work. The first block I did lunges (which were modified from the bench jump lunges we were supposed to do), weighted seated rotations on the bench, and rollouts on the straps (we were supposed to do Supermans but I know being on the ground like that makes me feel worse). The second block I did lunges (instead of step ups on the bench), plank shoulder taps using the bench so I wasn’t on the ground (we were supposed to do plank pull throughs with weights), and leg lifts on the bench. When I was switching from being on the bench to standing I had a lot of waves of nausea, so I just took my time and didn’t stress about how many rounds I was going to get done.

Saturday was another day with multiple challenges for me. Not only did I have the nausea to deal with, but Friday night to Saturday morning I didn’t really sleep at all. I rarely have insomnia, but when I do it’s pretty much not sleeping at all. I think maybe that entire night I slept 10-20 minutes. I was exhausted, but I was hoping a workout might wake me up a bit.

It was a strength based class and I was on the bike since it was incline work plus I had my nausea issues. We had 3 blocks and they all had a similar pattern. We had a 90 second push pace, 1 minute base pace, high incline work where all treadmill people were power walkers, 1 minute base pace, and each block ended with a push to all out pace. For the high incline work, the first block was 1 minute and each block added on 30 seconds. I did my normal resistance levels for the regular base/push/all out segments and went to one of the higher levels I have used when there was the high incline work. I have done a higher resistance level, but I really wanted to be able to do the base pace after the resistance and not need a full break. I feel like I did a good job considering the circumstances and was very happy with the work I did on the bike.

On the floor the first 2 blocks both had 2 exercises and a 400 meter row. The first block was shoulder presses and high rows using the weights and the second block was squats to upright rows and deadlifts. I used 15 lb weights for everything except the deadlifts. That’s not a super heavy weight, but the weight I usually use for some of those exercises isn’t a weight they have at the Culver City studio. And for the deadlifts, I started at 30 lbs but it was just a bit too much for me and I went down to 25 lbs. For both 400 meter rows, I was able to finish it in under 2 minutes and managed to be faster on the second row. And the last block on the floor was just the exercises without the row. I was definitely exhausted and ready for a nap after this workout, but I made it through even with no sleep.

I know this week of workouts will probably be a bit challenging for me since I will still be dealing with nausea. But I’m not too upset about it because I really didn’t want to have my nausea time to be during Thanksgiving. Not only will I be with family then, but I have my workout with my family on Thanksgiving morning and I want to do one of my best workouts then! Hopefully I’ll be ready to do some amazing work when I get to work out with them!

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Struggling To Figure Out A Monthly Challenge (or Finding Myself Again)

Posted on November 1, 2018 | 1 comment

It’s almost the end of the year! I can’t believe that in 2 months it will be 2019! And with the start of November I am recapping a monthly challenge and sharing a new one. While this year as been the year of more abstract challenges, I feel like this might be the most abstract one and a bit tough to explain. But first, I want to share how my October challenge went.

I wanted to continue building on my challenge to not shop online by being much clearer on what I wanted to buy when I did shop online or in person. I did do some online shopping last month, but it was much more deliberate than it has been in the past. I did work on using my Amazon wish lists and just leaving things in my cart online to not shop until I had something I really needed. Then I would reevaluate what I was actually going to purchase. The only time this didn’t work was with ordering a bra online because I thought I added both of the ones I wanted and it only had 1 in the order. Since I really wanted both (I think the women reading this understand that when you find a bra that fits you want it in multiple colors to go under anything you might wear), I did 2 orders back to back to get everything ordered that I was hoping to have. It wasn’t impulsive or done for just convenience like I had in the past, which is a good sign.

For shopping in person, I got much better about making my lists. I usually would make a list on a sticky note before I went to the store and that helped a lot. I wasn’t forgetting things at the store like I sometimes do and I was cutting back on how often I had to go to the store. I did still have some impulsive buys when I saw things I wasn’t expecting (like the Wonder Woman sheet mask I saw at CVS when I was getting contact lens solution), but it was much less than before. I still took my time when shopping and wandered around the stores, but it was more of seeing what else is out there than trying to figure out what I wanted to get. I had already been doing shopping lists from time to time, but I’m glad I forced myself to do them more often and I plan on keeping this up.

Now for November’s challenge, I really struggled to figure out what I wanted to do. I had lots of little ideas, but none of them seemed to really connect to me or feel worthy of a monthly challenge. Some of them were things I was already planning on doing this month and that almost felt like a cheat since it wasn’t a new challenge. I probably was thinking about this since the beginning of October and by this week I still didn’t have an idea of what I would do.

But I was inspired by a phone call I had with my aunt the other day. We usually talk every week (we discuss the tv shows we both watch), but we had been having trouble connecting on the phone so we hadn’t talked in almost a month. We both have been dealing with lots of randomness so it wasn’t either of our faults that the phone call took forever to happen. And while we were talking we discussed what was happening in our lives. And I just kept saying some variation of how I just don’t feel like myself or like I’m back on track to normal life.

I don’t know exactly why I’m feeling like this, but I know that some of the smaller challenge ideas I had for this month are a part of that. I am struggling with money right now and it’s a huge stress on my mind. Worrying about money as often as I am right now isn’t what I’m used to. I do worry about money, but not like I am right now. My food has been off too, but that is due to lots of different factors that I’m trying to resolve. My sleep has been a bit of a struggle, but it’s slowly getting better and I’m closer to the amount of sleep I know I need to get. And some things are just piling up and I’m so far behind (like catching up on podcasts or reading) and I can’t figure out why this is happening or where my time is going.

So this month, I’m trying to find myself again. I don’t know where I went or what happened, but I need to fix this. It’s such an abstract challenge and I have no idea how I will measure if I am successful or not, but it’s exactly what I need to do right now. This is similar to many of the other abstract challenges I’ve done this month, but this time I’m not being specific on what I’m trying to accomplish. I just want this uneasy and unsettled feeling to go away and to feel like I know I can and should. And I want to do whatever it takes to make that happen and I’m not sure what it will involve.

I know some of the things I need to work on and what I can do to try to fix them, but I don’t know if those individual things will make me feel more like me again. It might take other things that I haven’t thought of that I will discover as the month goes on. And having this challenge as open and general as it is will allow me to do what I discover I need to do. And hopefully in a month when I recap this post I will be able to share that I am feeling much more like me (even if I’m not all the way there yet) and will know what changes I needed to make in my life to get there.

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