Tag Archives: strength

Strength and Savings (or Picking A New Monthly Challenge I Know I Need To Do)

Happy April! I feel like March both flew by and took a long time and it also felt like more than one month with many things happening in my life. It wasn’t the craziest month of my life but the craziest month I feel like I’ve had in a long time.  While it wasn’t all good things, it was nice that a lot of them were positive and reminded me more of what my life used to be like. And I’m proud of myself for not letting a bit of craziness get in the way of my monthly challenge.

I think I really needed the challenge I set for last month, which was to try to make some improvements in my workouts. I know that I have been wanting to do that for a while, but it’s not the easiest thing to do. But wanting to do it and needing to do it finally came together in March and I really think I found a way to try to get this done. I didn’t make all the improvements that I had hoped to, but I found ways to test myself and to try to see what I could do. I didn’t focus as much on improving on the bike, but I think I was able to get more comfortable with my new resistance levels. On the rower, I focused on things other than how fast I could row and I know I saw a lot of improvements doing that, including having faster rowing times. I think I’m going to continue focusing on things that aren’t how long it will take me to row a distance and I should hopefully continue to see results that include faster rows. And on the floor, I didn’t really get to use heavier weights like I wanted to, but I tried. I know that as I continue to try, eventually I’ll be ready for those heavier weights. But it will take me a bit longer than a month to get that accomplished.

Considering that I had a month, I feel pretty good about what I was able to accomplish but even more proud that I have decided to continue with some of the plans I created in March to see more progress moving forward. I know that I might not see the results in the next month or two and it could take longer, but at least I know I’ll be working toward them.

And for my April challenge, I’ve thought of something that combines a few different things that I know I’ve been trying to work on. My challenge this month is to significantly reduce my food waste. When I go to the grocery store, I always have the best intentions with the things I buy. But far too often, I don’t use up what I get or they expire before I use them. I hate when I’m cleaning my fridge and discover things I forgot about or that have spoiled. And it’s frustrating to have to throw out things because I hate wasting money as well as food.

Reducing my food waste will require me to be much more aware when I go grocery shopping. I also think I might need to get back to how I was shopping before the pandemic when I usually went to the store to get things only for the next few days instead of trying to get everything for the week at one time. I might buy something on Sunday thinking I want it but by Friday I really don’t want to have to make it. So if I’m shopping more often, then I can focus on what I want for that day or the next and not what I might want a week away.

I also will need to make sure that I’m eating at home or from things I made more. I’ve been getting much better about this and don’t order in that often anymore, but I also know I can be better. This might mean I need more easy meals as options, so when I went to the store most recently I made sure that I got more frozen meals as options so I could make a quick dinner if I don’t feel like cooking. I also want to get back into using my food saver to freeze things so I can make things on my own and have them as frozen meals, but that’s not something I want to do in bulk and just do it as I have things to save.

There are some things I’m allowing myself to not feel too guilty about with this challenge. There are some things I buy that I just can’t use up fast enough before it expires. For example, I don’t use mayonnaise that often, but I do use it sometimes. So I bought the smallest container of it months ago and I’m only about halfway through the container and it expired last week. I also won’t be forcing myself to eat everything on my plate if I make something and realize I don’t have the ability to finish it. That will mainly be something to worry about if I’m making a frozen meal since something I cook myself will be my own portion sizes and I normally serve myself less than I think I’ll want and get more if I’m still hungry.

I don’t have a goal of being zero waste or eliminating all my food waste, but I also know that there is a lot of improvement I can see in this aspect of my life. And I hope that by the end of this month, I feel like I’m not wasting as much food or money so I can know I’ve made a difference.

Working On Feeling Better Mentally and Physically (or Picking A Workout Challenge For March)

When I set my monthly challenge for February, I had no idea I’d basically be forced into sleeping better in order to get over the cold I caught. I was going to bed earlier and could sleep in because I wasn’t going to my workouts. I think the last time I got that much sleep was when I was out of work and was not getting up too early to work out in the morning.

And getting that much sleep that week proved how much I really needed to work on my sleep schedule. I’m back to getting up as early as I normally do since I’m back to my workouts, so my focus has to be on what time I get to bed. There are some nights when I’m getting to bed a lot earlier than I used to and there are other nights when I’m noticing I’m staying up too late. But even those later nights are still not as bad as they used to be. I’m averaging about an hour more sleep a night, which is a start. I want to get it up a bit higher, but that will take some time. But at least I’ve made a start that I can build off of. This is a work in progress, but it’s the most progress I’ve made on this goal that I’ve had for myself for a long time.

And for this month, I’m doing another health-related challenge and it’s inspired a bit by the time when I was sick. After I took a week off from my workouts, I did notice that I had gotten a bit weaker. This was expected since I had to take time off, but it was frustrating. And since I’ve been back, I’ve been really wanting to build my strength back up. But as I’ve been doing that, I also have wondered if I’ve been stagnant with what I have been doing. So this month, I want to challenge myself to find where I can be stronger and work harder in my workouts.

I know that there are some parts of my workouts that might be easier to build upon than others. I think it will be hardest to have improvements with my rowing, but I know I can still try. But because of some physical restrictions, there is only so much I can do. I’ll see what can happen when I try, but I’m not setting any crazy expectations. But I think I can make some good improvements on the bike and with the floor work. I want to see if I can increase the resistance level on the bike a bit more for some of the workouts and also see if I can pedal faster when I’m using the levels I’ve been using for a while. And on the floor, I know it’s not just as easy as using heavier weights, but I should be more comfortable with testing out the heavier weights to see if it’s possible or if I could do some of the reps with the heavy weights before using my normal ones. This isn’t the most straightforward progress, but they are steps toward improvement and that’s what I need to be ok with doing.

As much as I’d love to see super fast progress and immediately have improvements in my workouts, I think seeing how my sleep improvement went made me remember that any steps of progress are good. So even if I end March with marginal improvements, that will still put me ahead of where I am now. And if I can make small improvements every month or every other month, that will add up over time. All I can do is try and see what happens over the course of this month and hopefully, there will be some changes that I can continue over time so I see some big improvements and changes at the end of the year.

More Proof Of My Strength (or I Love Seeing Results Of My Workouts In Real Life)

I know that I do the best I can in my workouts each week. Sometimes that means I’m working harder and sometimes that means I’m going a bit easier. But I always make my best effort and try because I do want to see results. Seeing results hasn’t been the easiest thing for me and that can be very frustrating. I feel like for the work that I do, I should be seeing more changes in my body. And I know that there are probably some changes that are happening that I can’t see, but I wish that there were some visible results from time to time to encourage me to keep going.

I’ve had a few moments since starting at Orangetheory that I have seen my strength and it’s surprised me. I know that I’m strong, but when 20-pound weights seem heavy in a workout it’s crazy to think that I can lift several times that if I’m doing something in my regular life. And maybe the real-world experiences have to do with being stubborn and not just my strength. And I had an example of that this week.

I have been looking for a new tv stand pretty much since I moved into my condo. When I saw how tiny my current one looked, I knew I needed to upgrade. But I didn’t want to just spend my money on anything so I took my time looking for the right one. It was nice to not need to rush to buy something, but I also realized after looking at them for a while that I needed to make a choice because any of the ones I was looking at could work. So I picked one that felt the most unique and visually interesting and had it shipped to my house.

At my old place, deliveries were always right in front of my front door. At my current place, sometimes they bring things right to my door and sometimes they are left by the mailboxes. Our mailboxes aren’t that far from my door, I just have to go across the courtyard. And it’s never really been an issue since I haven’t ordered anything that was too heavy before. But that was until my new tv stand arrived.

I knew that I ordered something big because I was very specific in my search for the right one and I knew I needed something much bigger than what I had. But I guess I didn’t think about it too much until the box was sitting by the mailboxes and it was taller than me. And not only was it a huge box, but it also weighed over 120 pounds (at least according to the side of the box). I went to my neighbor’s door to see if maybe they could help me, but they weren’t available. And I didn’t want to leave it by the mailboxes since it could possibly be in someone’s way. So I had to figure out how to get it across the courtyard to my place.

It took a few minutes for me to safely lay the box down so it was on the side and then I worked on pushing it in small bursts. It was like how people in workouts push those weighted sleds, but it was a very awkward thing to move since it was a skinny box and I had to navigate multiple turns. Nobody was in the courtyard while I was doing this, so I didn’t have a chance to ask anyone for help. But also nobody saw how long this took me to accomplish. It felt like a second workout for the day since I had already worked out that morning. But after some time, I finally got the huge box inside my house and I could relax.

I’ll work on building the tv stand soon, but since I can open the box and take out what I need I don’t need to worry about pushing the heavy box again. But knowing that I was able to do that on my own when I thought I would need help just proved to me how strong I really am. I don’t think this means I should lift heavier weights all the time since this was a very different thing from what I do in my workouts. But it was nice to see how strong I’ve gotten and how there are results in my body even if I can’t see them when I look in the mirror.

Some Real World Results From My Workouts (or Only Moving A Few Heavy Things)

Even though it would be cheaper for me to move things to the condo on my own, I know that it will be much easier for me to hire movers. I’m not planning on using movers for everything. As I mentioned before I have started to move things over and store them away so that they are there when I finally move. And because I have quite a bit of an overlap of when I can move, it’s easy enough for me to take a few boxes of things each day, empty them where I can, and then repeat the next day. So that’s been my life for this week and will probably continue to be through the rest of this month.

But for the heavy furniture, I have hired movers. This is just going to make my life easier because I know that it would be hard to move my couch, dresser, or furniture like that. And because my move isn’t that far and I won’t be having the movers take too much, I know that it’s very likely that I won’t have to spend more money than the minimum for the moving company (the standard seems to be 3 hours and I feel like my stuff should be moved within that amount of time).

But there have been a few heavy things that I had to move ahead of the movers being there. The heaviest was my new bed. I found a nice bed that I wanted to get and because I ordered it a few weeks ago it was delivered to my current place. I also got a new mattress since I decided it would be something nice to have when I’m living somewhere new. But the boxes that those things came in were very heavy. The bed was about 150 pounds and the mattress was about 120 pounds. And they were giant boxes so I couldn’t put them in my car even if I wanted to.

The original plan was for my parents to help me out, but that didn’t work out since they didn’t come to LA. And I knew I wanted to get them to the condo before I had movers so I could set up my bed and sleep there the day I move without having to put everything together that day. So I had to see if I could think of someone who was strong and had a big enough car to help me out. And I thought of one of my workout coaches who I know drives a truck. So I asked him if he’d be willing to help me, and he agreed. I was so grateful he could help me and we were able to move those boxes this past weekend.

I don’t know if most of my other friends would have been able to help me. These boxes were so heavy and awkward and even with having someone as strong as my coach help me they were not easy to move. But we got them into my room and hopefully I’ll be able to build the bed with a friend before I have the movers there. I’m still working on that.

But besides moving the heavy boxes that I was expecting to move, I had one other unexpectedly heavy box I moved on my own. Although it shouldn’t have been unexpected if I really thought about it. I moved all my workout stuff to the condo the other day and they all fit really nicely into one box.

I knew the box would be heavy, but I didn’t think too much about it. But it was a tough one to get in and out of my car. And even though I have a little hand cart to move things, even using that was really difficult. I finally got it inside and was thinking about it and I realize how heavy this one box was. I had 2 adjustable weights (that were 25 pounds each), 2 hand weights that were 10 pounds each, and a medicine ball that was 12 pounds. The other things in there weren’t that heavy and didn’t add that much weight to the box. But for just the weighted things, that’s 82 pounds in that box! That’s even heavier than half of the box that had my bed!

I did regret moving this heavy of a box after because my arms were really sore, but I am glad I got it moved and that’s done with. And I know that it wouldn’t have been possible if I wasn’t working out as much as I do. I don’t get a lot of chances to see my strength outside of my workouts, but moving all these heavy boxes made it really obvious how much stronger I am now compared to before. I never could have moved a box that was over 80 pounds without my workouts. And I did feel really accomplished after getting that done.

I don’t think there will be any other extremely heavy things I need to move on my own. There will be things like my dishes and pots and pans that will be a bit heavy and probably awkward boxes to move, but there will be nothing close to these crazy boxes that I thankfully am done with.

It’s getting closer and closer to when I’m moving and I can’t wait to share with you all what my place looks like after the renovation is finally done!

 

Just A Normal And Good Workout Week (or Using My Workouts To Get Out My Stress)

When gyms were shut down for over a year, I could tell that stress and other negative emotions were getting to me more than normal. There is no question in my mind that going to my workouts helps my mental health, and even when I have a good week I can use the workouts to get some stress out of my system. And that’s exactly what happened this past week. I had an overall good week, but I did need to work out some stress and anxiety and I think that led to my workouts being better for me.

Monday’s workout was a mix of endurance, strength, and power and it was a 2 group class. And even though there was some endurance work in the workout, I had a lot of opportunities to work on my power, especially on the bike.

For cardio, we had the same workout for blocks 1, 3, and 5. Those blocks were a 30-second push pace, 30-second base pace, and 30-second all-out. I really tried to push my speed on the bike for those all-outs since they were short blocks. And for blocks 2 and 4 we had a 2-minute push pace, 1-minute base pace, 2-minute push pace at an incline, 1-minute base pace, 30-second push pace, and 30-second all-out. Those blocks were a bit harder for the all-outs since it was after more intervals, including hills. But I was still able to push myself a bit more than normal for all the intervals.

And on the floor, we also had 5 blocks. This time, for blocks 1, 3, and 5 we had the same exercises. We had burpees, hip hinge low rows, and neutral thrusters. Each exercise was done for 30-seconds (timed out with the treadmills), but we did them in a different order for each block. For block 2 we had pull-ups on the straps (which I did as high rows), plank rotations, and a 150-meter row. And for block 4 we had chest presses on the straps, dead bugs, and a 150-meter row. I finally feel like I can push off on the rower properly with my heel again, so my rowing is almost back to normal. I just have to work on my form which got sloppy while I wasn’t able to row properly.

Wednesday’s workout was a power day. I was having a bit of a bad hip day due to how I slept the night before, but it wasn’t too bad and it was something I could manage pretty well throughout the workout.

For cardio, blocks 1 and 3 were all about 30-second intervals. We had a round of a push pace to an all-out and 2 rounds of a push pace to base pace to an all-out. And after each all-out, we had 30-seconds of a walking recovery which isn’t too long to recover. And in block 2, we had 2 rounds of a 30-second push pace to a 1-minute base pace with a 30-second all-out at the end.

On the rower, blocks 1 and 3 were timed with the treadmills with the 30-second intervals. Even though my rowing is getting better, I don’t have a huge difference between my base and push rows. For my all-out rows, I usually can go harder because I know I will have recovery time after so I can burn out a bit. And for the second block, we had rounds of 150-meter rows with high knees. I tried my best with the high knees, but I pretty much did them as static marching but I think it was a close modification.

And on the floor, blocks 1 and 3 were timed with cardio as well. For block 1 we had 30-seconds of a low row on the left side, 30-seconds of a low row on the right side, and 30-seconds of recovery time. And for block 3 it was the same idea but with single-arm clean to press instead of the low row. And for block 2, we had single-arm squats to upright rows and overhead presses with a rainbow arc (so you moved the weight from side to side).

Friday’s workout was an endurance workout and I was having a bit more hip pain than I did on Wednesday. It was a combination of some residual pain from Wednesday plus some pain due to the weather. But the pain was more about being uncomfortable than it was sharp pain like it can be sometimes. And for all sides of the room, we had a single 14-minute block.

For cardio, it was rounds of a push pace followed by a 90-second base pace. The push paces were 4-minutes, 2-minutes, 90-seconds, 1-minute, and 30-seconds. And we ended with a 30-second all-out. The 4-minute push was really more of a timed challenge so we didn’t have to do what we normally would do for a push pace. So I put the resistance level on the bike at the level between my base and push level. But for the other push paces, I did my normal push level.

The rower was probably the hardest section for me. It was timed with cardio and every time cardio had a push pace or an all-out we had a timed distance row. Rowing for 4-minutes isn’t easy to do no matter how I feel. And it was a bit harder than normal for me due to all my hip issues. I couldn’t do it without a break, but I tried to keep going whenever I could. And when cardio was at a base pace, we had squats and overhead presses with a medicine ball. We were supposed to do 15 of each exercise, but we only had 90-seconds to do it and I couldn’t get them all done so I usually did 10 or 12 reps of each.

And on the floor, we had 3 mini-blocks within the long block and we did each mini-block twice before moving on to the next one. The first mini-block was all about lunges, and I had to modify it to just be regular lunges for the exercises. The second mini-block had lateral lunges to suitcase squats (which I had to do as 2 separate exercises) and cossack squats. And the last mini-block had sit-ups with rotations and reverse crunches. I spent a lot of time on that last block since I usually don’t do sit-ups and do crunches instead, but I wanted to challenge myself and I took my time and did them.

Saturday was another strength day and another 2 group class. And this strength-based workout was based around doing drop sets on the floor, which I always like as a challenge.

We had 3 blocks for both sides of the room. And for cardio, every block had the same pattern. We had a push pace, a 1-minute base pace, hill work, a 30-second push pace, a 1-minute base pace, and a 30-second all out. Each block, the first push pace and the hill work got shorter. We started with a 2-minute push pace and a 90-second hill, decreasing the incline/resistance level every 30-seconds, and each block the push and hill were 30-seconds shorter. The hill work was pretty high for me with the resistance levels, but I could tell that I am getting stronger on the bike because they weren’t as challenging as they were before.

On the floor, every block had a drop set exercise plus one other exercise. And for the first 2 blocks, we also had a row. The first block had a 300-meter row and the second block had a 200-meter row. The drop set exercises were shoulder presses, tricep extensions, and single-arm low rows. And the other exercises were rollouts on the straps, mountain climbers, and plank shoulder taps. I know I didn’t do the heaviest I’ve done with drop sets before, but I also didn’t go as low for the lighter rep sets as I did before. So I think having a smaller difference between the sets of weights I used was a sign of improvement.

This past week honestly was a week I needed. I still don’t love how early I get up in the mornings, but I also feel so much better about things after I’m done with my workout. I need this mood boost in the mornings and I’m glad some of the negative things in my life were used for good with being able to push me more.

Sticking With The Same Workout Plan, For Now (or Continuing To Work On Weightlifting)

Last week, I wrote about the most recent change to my workout plan. I decided to stop worrying as much about cardio and just focus on doing strength and weightlifting work. This was a huge change for me. I never have been great about strength work on my own. When I belonged to a regular gym, I rarely did more than cardio unless I was working with a personal trainer. And while I loved doing the strength work at Orangetheory, it always felt like a part of the reason I loved it was having someone coach me. I was always doing strength work in my home workouts, but it didn’t feel the same.

And I wasn’t expecting dropping cardio to focus on strength work to make a huge difference because I knew how I had been feeling before. But somehow, it did! I don’t know if it felt like there was less pressure on me or if I wasn’t feeling as overwhelmed or tired. All my focus was on doing my weightlifting work and I didn’t have to think about much else. It was a change that I clearly needed to feel better about my workouts again.

Since it worked so well for me the first week, I knew I was going to keep doing it again last week. I didn’t feel the need to try anything different or make changes. I just wanted to feel as good as I did the week before with my workouts.

I did do the exact same plan last week, and that might not have been the most ideal thing. I know the exercises might need to be switched up, but for now, I’m not worrying too much about it. The exercises are a full-body strength workout and that’s important. I don’t have to worry that I’m only focusing on upper body or lower body. Maybe in a week or two, I will work more on finding workouts that I can alternate so I have different muscles working on different days. But again, I’m not too concerned about it. I’m still in the mindset that doing something is better than doing nothing. And if I’m not doing the best workouts possible, that’s ok as long as I’m doing something.

I was still dealing with some nausea issues, which did affect my workout. Some of my nausea is still connected to medication, but I’m also getting my monthly nausea again (which will likely hit me full force by the end of this week). Very few of the exercises in the strength routine are ones that make me feel worse, and when I was getting more nauseous it was easy enough for me to either skip that exercise or do a modification to make it easier. Since I wasn’t following along to a video, I didn’t feel the need to stay at any particular pace. My breaks didn’t feel like lost workout time, but I still tried to keep breaks to a minimum. I feel like some of the pressure and stress I had been putting on myself wasn’t as bad in these new workouts, and that’s something I didn’t realize I needed.

So my plan for now is to keep doing what I’m doing. I might do some research on other strength workouts to try, but it depends on how I feel this week. I am prepared to have a tough workout week with pain and nausea, and I’m not going to put any unnecessary pressure on myself when I have something that is working right now. And like I’ve said several times before, who knows how long this workout plan will last. I change things up a lot, and I’m aware that next week I might have something totally different. But I’m enjoying this for now and I’m going to keep doing it!

A Weightlifting Week (or Of Course I’m Still Changing It Up)

After I wrote my post last week about my workouts, I was having a lot of thoughts about how things are going. I’m trying to stay optimistic about my time of working out at home being close to done. I still don’t know for sure when I will be able to be vaccinated, so it’s still a little unknown when I will feel safe to go to the outdoor workouts. But I feel like there is a finish line that I’m coming up to now. So that was making me feel pretty good.

But I have been feeling down about my workouts for a while. I don’t think there is any denying that. I’m sure it can be read in my posts. I’m not happy with what I’m able to do. I don’t have the options that I want to have a tough workout and it’s hard to not compare myself to my past self. I know that this time is not normal and I have to give some flexibility in what is possible. And in the end, I will be grateful that I made it through this time and not worried about how my workouts went. And I know that to be true, but it doesn’t help when I’m not feeling great about my workouts and wondering if I’m just doing the home workouts to feel better about myself but I’m not doing anything to make myself better.

And then a friend and I were talking and they said something that I didn’t consider before. While I know cardio is important to do, it’s not easy to do in my house. I do try to use my jump rope when I can, but I dream of the day I can get back on the rowing machine. I’m still on a waitlist for renting one, but I’m guessing I won’t be getting one until after I’m back at my regular workouts. So cardio to me is just frustrating and feels impossible. And the negative things I mention in my workout recaps are often about my lack of strength. So my friend suggested that I try to just do weightlifting workouts.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this as an option. But once they said it, it seemed like something I needed to try and see how I did. So I did a little research online and found a good and basic weightlifting plan. It’s a full-body weightlifting plan (so I don’t have things like back or leg days) and just did that for my workouts last week. And it was a different feeling for sure. I still was frustrated when I was thinking about how I used to be able to squat with one weight and now I’m below that. Or how I was getting tired with lower reps than I was used to. But it wasn’t as frustrating as my workouts with cardio have been.

And even though there wasn’t technically a cardio element to the workout, I was getting my heart rate up just by doing the exercises back to back. And another thing that was nice was that it was a bit faster for me to do that workout than the video workouts I had been doing. I wasn’t taking as many breaks to see the next workout moves and could quickly move from one thing to another. And when I have limited time before work, a shorter workout is good. It still took me about 30-35 minutes each time, but it was packed with workout time and almost no break time.

I don’t know if I feel a huge difference in my body, but it was nice to not feel as let down by my workouts. And because it seems like so little in my life is stable these days, I am writing this now and for all I know, I will have a totally new plan this week. But as I have written so many times in the past 11 months, I just have to keep going and keep trying and not give up. And that’s exactly what I’ll keep doing. And if that means just doing weightlifting and strength work, I’ll do that. If it means I keep changing every week, I’ll do that. I guess I’ll just have to see where my fitness inspiration comes each week.

A Double Hard Workout Week (or I Did Want A Challenge)

So many of my workout recap post on here have been about how I know the workouts I’m doing at home are better than nothing, but that they are not close to what I know I was doing at the studio. I have worried about gaining weight, losing muscle, having setbacks for when I finally do get back into the studio, and losing my motivation to do my workouts the way that I was doing them 6 months ago. And while I still think that there will never be a perfect replacement for the in-studio workouts, this past week of workouts was easily the closest I’ve had since I started working out at home. And this was due to 2 things.

First, I finally got to work out with my new weights!

These took a bit longer to get to me than I expected, but now that I have them I’m so happy! As you can see, the weights go from 5-25 pounds in 5-pound increments. While I do use 12- and 17.5-pound weights when I’m in the studio, I didn’t think I would need those for now. I know for sure that I have lost some strength and need to work on rebuilding that. So for things that I used 12-pound weights, I’m using 10. Instead of 17.5-pound weights, I’m using either 15 or 10 (depending on the exercise).

The first workout that I got to use the weights was my Monday workout and I immediately noticed a difference in how I felt after I was done. The workout was so much harder than any other home workout and I was even feeling a bit sore. The weights are pretty easy to use and switch out how heavy or light I want them to be. It’s not as easy as having a set for each weight that I use, but I also know that having a pile of dumbbells would not fit in my house. These are perfect for what I need and they fit in very nicely with the rest of my home workout equipment.

I used my new weights for every workout this past week and I really felt a huge difference. It was a little upsetting and sad when I realized that I cannot do what I used to do. As much as I told myself that would happen, it was hard to see it come true. I know that I can rebuild my strength and muscles and I’ll be back to where I was soon enough. And now that I have some good weights at home, hopefully I’ll be closer to that whenever I’m able to get back into the studio.

The other reason why this past week of workouts was so hard was that I did 2 days of Zoom workouts! The group that I do Zoom workouts with normally does them on Tuesdays and Fridays. I cannot join in for the Tuesdays ones, so I only get to do the Friday workouts. But this past week, things switched up. Instead of Tuesday and Friday, we had Zoom workouts on Wednesday and Saturday! This was only a switch for this week (I wish they could move the Tuesday one to Wednesday, but that schedule doesn’t work for the rest of the group). But it allowed me to have double the Zoom workouts that I normally get to do.

Between the new weights and the Zoom workouts, this was the most challenging and most rewarding workout week in a long time. I want to say this was the best week I’ve had in the 6 months that I’ve had to work out at home so far. I really felt like things were going so much better for me in the workout and that I was doing a really challenging workout and not just goofing off a bit. I know that having these weights is going to help me feel like this a bit for all the rest of the workouts because I do have something that can make the exercises harder. And I can see the progress as I’m able to lift heavier. That’s something I haven’t been able to see since the studios had to close.

After this past week of workouts, I’m on such a high. I needed this challenge and this boost. I have been feeling so low about my workouts and my weight for too long and this really made me feel more in control of things. I know that having weights in my house isn’t going to be a magical fix for everything, but it is a big thing that I know I’ve been needing to have. And now that I have them, I can’t wait to continue to challenge myself and see if I’m able to have any big workout wins like I used to have in the studio.

Lots Of Lower Body Work (or A Week Of Froggers)

This past week of workouts was not what I was expecting. Every workout at Orangetheory is different, but we had a lot of similar things throughout the week. I definitely pushed myself and sometimes that is a bit much, but this time the pushing just led to soreness which proved I was working hard.

Monday’s workout was a themed class for National Frog Day (yes, that’s a thing). Every section of the workout had frogger squats as a big part of it. Sometimes it was an exercise in the workout and sometimes it was timed within a block. But there were a ton of frogger squats the entire time.

For cardio, every block was the same. We had a 30 second push pace and 45 second base pace that repeated and then we had a 30 second all out pace. After that we had a minute to recover and get off the treadmill/bike before we had 30 seconds of frogger squats. All 3 blocks were like that and the frogger squats weren’t too bad since for me it was the beginning of the class. I did keep my bike resistance levels a bit lower just to not overwork my quads before all the squats.

For the floor and the rower we switched between blocks. So when it my technically my rowing time I had 2 blocks on the rower and 1 block on the floor. And for my floor time I had 2 blocks on the floor and 1 on the rower. On the rower, we started with 10 frogger squats and 1 single arm snatch with a dumbbell on each side. Then we went down 1 frogger squat and up 1 single arm snatch. We had that for about 4 minutes before heading to the rower for a 30 second all out row. When we got back to the rower, we picked up on the exercises where we left off.

The floor was a similar pattern to the rower. We had exercises and then at the end we had 30 seconds of frogger squats. The exercises were high rows on the straps, knee tucks on the ab dolly with pushups, and ab dolly roll outs. The exercises weren’t too hard and I didn’t need that many modifications, but the frogger squats were getting tough. I have no clue how many I did over the entire workout, but they did make me sore and I really didn’t want to do another frogger squat for a long time after I was done.

Wednesday’s workout was an endurance day and it was designed to help get us ready for the 12 minute run benchmark that we will have coming up soon. I have a different feeling about running themed benchmarks now that I do them on the bike, but it’s not a bad feeling. It’s less pressure since I don’t have a big history of what I can do, but also a little uncertainty because of the same reason.

For cardio, we warmed up with a 1 minute push pace before having a recovery and then a 5.5 minute run for distance. I set the resistance level at my old push pace and it was a bit tough to maintain that the entire time. After the 5.5 minutes, we had another recovery before doing the 5.5 minute distance run again. The goal was to do at least what we did the first time. I was able to use the same resistance level and I got a bit further in the distance so I was very happy with that.

On the rower, we started with a 2.5 minute row for distance. I was able to get a little bit further than what I normally can do. Then we had lunges with tricep extensions using a medicine ball. For each round on the rower we were supposed to decrease our row by 100 meters and we kept the lunges with tricep extensions the same. Normally when we have workout plans like this I just use a round number for my rowing distance. But I decided to use my actual distance and do the math each time I was on the rower. It wasn’t too hard, but it did make the rowing a bit longer than it would have been with round numbers.

On the floor, we had 2 blocks. The first block was all work with weights. We had shoulder presses, double crunches, and weighted hip bridges. I didn’t go too heavy with the shoulder presses or double crunches because I was still trying to be careful with my back. But with the hip bridges, I did go heavy. I used to be very worried about putting weight on my hips, but I’ve realized how strong they are and I love that I can use a weight that seemed impossible to me before. The second block had toe taps using the bench which I was able to do with holding on to the straps and doing a single leg squat as well as roll outs using the straps. The modified toe taps were tough and I had some issues balancing. I just tried to do what I could and sometimes that meant taking a break and having both legs on the bench between each one.

Friday’s workout was a power day and it had some really awesome moments and some moments that were a real struggle. But the struggle in the workout was something that I think most of us struggled with so having that support helped.

For cardio, we had 3 blocks that were the same. We had a 30 second push pace, 1 minute base pace, 30 second all out, 1 minute recovery, and then a 30 second push pace to 30 second all out. For the first push and all out, I did my new resistance levels since we had a bit of recovery after them. And for the back to back push and all out, I used my old levels since there wasn’t the recovery. I’m glad I have gotten out of the mindset that I have to stick to one set of bike resistance levels since I have been enjoying going back and forth and playing with it.

The rower was where most people in class struggled. We had 3 blocks and each block had a 200, 150, and 100 meter row. And between each row we had frogger squats. Most of us in class also took class on Monday so when we heard we had to do more frogger squats we were pretty annoyed. We were given the option to do regular squats instead and I took that option. My legs were sore after all the frogger squats and I didn’t want to do more. Some people tried them, but I think all of us were not happy that frogger squats made an appearance again so soon.

On the floor, we had 2 blocks. The first block had lunges while holding weights, lunges without weights, sit-ups, and full burpees. I did my burpees on the bench like I’ve been doing for a while and even with that modification they were tough. I think it’s been a while since I’ve done them so I was a bit rusty with the movements. The second block had lunges with single arm shoulder presses and pop jacks. I did the pop jacks with the bench like the burpees and had the same issue with not being as fluid as I would have liked. I wish the burpees and pop jacks had gone smoother for me, but at least they weren’t hurting me and I could do them.

Saturday’s workout was strength based and it was a great class to end the week on. I felt really strong and powerful and even though this was a strength class it felt like it was more than just that.

For cardio we had 2 similar blocks. We had a push pace, base pace, base pace at incline, regular base pace, and an all out. I used my old push pace for the flat push paces and my new push base as the base pace with incline. It was a great mix of using the resistance levels on the bike and I really pushed myself to pedal faster when we didn’t have incline work. I don’t know why I felt so amazing and powerful in that class, but I did and the cardio work match perfectly for me.

On the rower, we started with a 200 meter row and we counted the strokes. Then we took the number of strokes we did and used that for medicine ball squat front raises. Then we went down one stroke and one squat each round. The goal was to do the strokes on the rower slowly to not have the count be so high. A lot of people rushed through the row, but I took my time. I still did a higher stroke count than I would have liked, but it was not too high which helped me not to have to do as many squats.

And on the floor, we had a lot of weighted work and some Bosu work. The first block had single arm hip swings with weights, half get ups with weights, and pullovers with weights on the Bosu. The second block was weighted hip bridges on the Bosu, chest presses with weights, and plank pull throughs. I was glad to get a break from lower body work on the floor and I was using some heavy weights to feel powerful.

This past week of workouts really had a lot of tough work, including a ton of lower body work. But this week might make this past week look easy because it’s Mayhem time! Hopefully I do ok in those workouts and I can’t wait to see what happens because I am really on a high with feeling awesome!

Working On My Strength (or Feeling More Normal Again)

I think it was pretty clear that I recently had a pretty bad workout week. It was horrible and I was feeling pretty bad about myself. I knew that it was due to crazy circumstances, but that still didn’t help me feel better about the effort that I did in class. Fortunately, things changed for the better for me this week and I found new things to work on.

Monday’s workout was so much better than the last Monday’s class. I was still dealing with the tail end of my nausea, but I was basically back to normal and I felt much more like myself. We had a strength based class and the rowing had a lot to do with stroke counts which was a nice challenge.

For cardio, we had 2 blocks. Each block had push paces with no inclines and push paces with inclines. We also had inclines for our all out paces. I was using my normal resistance levels on the bike and didn’t really do much to count for incline work except to use my all out resistance level for push paces with inclines. It made me realize that I might need to work on seeing if I should be increasing my resistance levels on the bike again. I’ve been doing the bike for a long time without a treadmill break and I’m not used to that. When I’m not on it as often, I don’t make a lot of changes with my resistance levels. But if I’m going to stick with the bike (which I’m really feeling like I will be doing), I can’t be static in what work I do.

On the rower, both blocks had the same challenge. We had a 150 meter row and we had to count how many strokes it took to do that. When we had squats with medicine balls and the number of reps equaled how many strokes the row took. So the goal was to have your stroke count as low as possible which requires a lot of patience. I’ve gotten pretty good at being slow on the rower for stroke count challenges so I was able to keep my count around 12-13 each time I did it.

And on the floor, each block had 2 exercises. The first block had squats to bicep curls and push-ups. And the second block had sumo squats to upright rows and sit-ups. For the weighted work, I wasn’t doing my heaviest weights, but I was doing better than I have been doing for the past month or so because I really wanted to push myself.

Wednesday’s workout was another strength day. Strength days used to be really hard on me when I was on the treadmill because I was limited with incline work, but I don’t mind them as much now that I use the bike. But just like on Monday, I know that I’m probably not doing enough resistance work to replicate hills on the bike and I really didn’t do that great with fixing that in this workout.

For cardio, it was mainly done at a base pace alternating between hill work and flat road work. I did use the resistance level between my push and all out paces for the hills, but I know I could do more and I was a little mad at myself after finishing the workout for not doing that. I’m not sure why I have this mental block that I can’t do more because I know physically I can. But maybe I needed this problem to come up so I could be aware of it and start fixing it.

For the rower, it was all shorter rows with squat work between each row. We started at a 200 meter row and then had a 150 meter and 100 meter row. After the 200 meter row, we had regular squats with the medicine ball. After the 150 meter row we had regular squats and ground to press with the medicine ball. And after the 100 meter row we had regular squats, growing to press, and power squats with the medicine ball. The squats were taking me a long time so I didn’t get as much rowing done as I would have liked to. But to keep my hips safe and not hurting I have to make sure that I am not sloppy with my squat form.

On the floor, we had 2 blocks. The first block had chest presses, knee tucks, and tricep extensions. And the second block had chest flys, sit-ups, and reverse flys. For the chest presses I could go pretty heavy with my weight, but for the other exercises I had to go a bit lighter than I would have liked to. My arms were feeling a bit weak and I think that my arms have always been like that and again I might just need to put some focus into fixing that.

Friday was another strength day (I feel like having all these strength days is a sign that I needed to work on them). Even though the other workouts during the week were also strength days, they all have their own focus and I was able to find different things to work on during this class compared to the other classes.

For cardio, it was a similar pattern to what we had earlier in the week with alternating flat road and incline work. But the incline work was for longer intervals in this class. When we had the hill work for 2 minutes, I was using my normal all out resistance level. To know I could do that for 2 minutes gave me a real boost in knowing what I could do. It wasn’t easy and my legs were sore when I was done, but I did it! When we had our all outs, they were supposed to be on hills so I did 1 level above what I usually use. If I hadn’t done the hills before, I think I could have done a higher level. But it just continued to prove that my biking ability is much more than I’ve been really doing.

On the rower, we started with a 600 meter row. After that we had squats with medicine ball raises and calf raises. Then we had 2 rounds of a 300 meter row with the medicine ball work after. After that we were supposed to have 3 rounds of 150 meter rows and more squat work, but my hips were really starting to hurt me. Friday morning we had a small earthquake very early in the morning and that woke me up and I never got back to sleep. I know sleep helps my body reset and makes my hip get back into alignment. So when I don’t sleep, I’m at a high risk for having a bad hip day and that’s exactly what happened. So instead of doing the squat work after the rounds of the 150 meter rows, I just kept rowing.

On the floor, we had 2 blocks with 2 exercises each. The first block had deadlifts and hollow hold single arm chest presses. And the second block had seated shoulder presses and double crunches. For the deadlifts and shoulder presses, we had a range for the number of reps we were supposed to do. So I went heavier than normal with the weights to test myself. I don’t think I could do the heavier weights if I had to do more than 5 or 6 reps, but since we could do as few as 5 they worked. For the chest presses and double crunches I just used my normal weights for the exercises because both of those things put a bit of stress on my hips and I didn’t want to risk things with going higher with the weight.

Saturday was an endurance based workout, but I ended up treating the class more like a power day. After all the motivation I had earlier in the week with my bike resistance levels, I decided to test a few things out.

For cardio, we had 2 blocks. The first block was 2 rounds of a 2 1/2 minute push pace with a recovery between them. 2 1/2 minutes is a pretty long push pace, but I still decided to see if I could increase my resistance level a bit. I increased it by 1 level (so it was the level between my push and all out pace) and it was tough. 2 1/2 minutes seemed to take forever, but I managed to keep the resistance level there the entire time. The second block was a 6 minute distance challenge. And I decided to use my previous push pace level and see if I could do that for the entire time. I was doing ok with it until about the 4th minute. Then I had to bring it back down to my old push pace level. But to know I did it for that long (plus that I did the previous push paces at a higher level) was the proof I needed that I was due for a change.

On the rower, we started with a 1,000 meter row. That was brutal after all the work on the bike! Then we had 100 jumping jacks to do which was tough as well. Jumping jacks aren’t that easy for me to do, even on my best days. I had to break them up into multiple chunks, but I eventually got them done. Then we had a 500 meter row and we were supposed to do 50 jumping jacks and 50 squats. I skipped the jumping jacks because I could feel my hip getting a bit sore. We had a few more rounds we could do on the rower, but after my 50 squats I was only on the rower for a few minutes before we switched again.

And the floor also had 2 blocks. The first one had upright rows, plank jacks, and knee tucks. And the second one had low rows on the straps, reverse flys, and sit-ups. The weight I wanted to use for the upright rows and reverse flys weren’t available so I had to decide if I wanted to go lower or higher. I tested out going higher with the weights and was able to do it! I don’t know if I’ll be using the higher weights regularly because I did have to take more breaks (so I didn’t get as much work done), but again it was nice to prove to myself that I was having a good week.

I really needed this past week after the week I had before. I needed the boost that I got from doing some great work so I could bring that into this week. I should hopefully be having another good week this week and I want to try to make even more progress!