This past week of workouts was a really good week for me. October has a lot of fun things happening at Orangetheory and I’m excited about them. Of course, there is Hell Week coming up at the end of the month. But there is also a triple buddy challenge happening for the entire month. I’m a part of a team of 3 and we need to complete 45 workouts this month as a group. I’m pretty sure this will happen no matter what with my group since we all go so often, but I also know not to slack off on things.
Monday’s workout was an endurance day with a benchmark challenge. It was the 12 minute run for distance and I knew that I couldn’t focus on the distance part of the challenge. In the past, I’ve been able to run the entire 12 minutes and that wasn’t going to be how this attempt went. But I tried to just focus on seeing what I could do and not what my distance was going to end up as.
For the 12 minute challenge, my original idea was to do 1 minute running/2 minutes walking intervals. I was able to do that for the first 4 minutes, but then I realized that running for a minute was just a bit too long for me. I was feeling a bit defeated because I did think that I was taking it easy, but my body was telling me that I was still going too hard. So I switched to 30 seconds running/90 seconds walking until the final minute. And for the last minute I ran and I knew that it was probably not the right choice but I still did it. Even though I told myself I wasn’t worried about the distance, I did have a goal in my head to try to be at least at .75 miles, and I was so happy and relieved that I was able to beat that.
Next I was on the floor where we had increasing rep counts. Our exercises were chest presses, tricep extensions, hip bridges with weight, crunches, and plank work. Since the rep counts were higher than what we had during the Orange X workout, I did go a bit lighter on my weights and used 25lb dumbbells.
Then it was back to cardio where technically it was a row challenge with running for distance when we were done. The idea was to take the distance we got on the treadmill and used that as our meters for the rower. And power walkers had to double theirs or they could do 1500 meters. Since 1500 meters was less than double my distance, that was what I was supposed to do. But we only had 7 minutes in that block so I was just on the rower the entire time. Very few people made it to the treadmill, but I think everyone was happy rowing after a tough treadmill challenge.
I ended my workout on the floor where we had decreasing rep count work. We had chest presses using the straps, plank alternating reaches, and more crunches. The 7 minutes for the floor work seemed to go by really quickly and I made it through 2 rounds before the workout was done.
Wednesday morning was a weird morning for me. I woke up to some texts from someone I didn’t care to hear from that really put me in a bad mood. I also slept funny and my shoulder was bugging me. I really wasn’t in the best mindset when walking into Orangetheory but I also knew a workout would help to improve my mood.
But because I was in a bad mood and a bit punchy, I didn’t want to use the treadmill. When I am in those moods, I know that sometimes I push myself too much to try to make something better in my day. So I did a bike day instead. It was a power based workout but it almost felt more like an endurance day. All of the blocks were either 4.5 or 5 minutes long. For cardio we did the same thing for the first and third block and then had the same thing for the second and fourth block. All the blocks had a push pace, base pace, all out pace, walking recovery, and all out pace; but the timing of the pushes and all outs changed between the 2 different formats. I stuck to my normal resistance levels on the bike but tried to increase how fast I was pedaling. I definitely felt like I was working hard and like I expected it did help to improve my mood.
The floor was also 4 blocks and they had an interesting format. Every block had 5 exercises. The second exercise in every block was always an ultimate burpee and the fourth exercise in every block was also a pop jack to squat. But the first, third, and fifth exercise (which was the same thing within a block) changed. In the first block that was a sumo squat, in the second block it was a pop jack, in the third block it was a plank jack, and in the last block it was a sprinter sit-up. I did have to do some modifications for several of these things. For the ultimate burpees, I started doing them the normal way but I never do the push-ups while holding the weights (I put my hands on the ground). By the third block, I switch to splitting up the moves so I did the burpees and then the bicep curl to shoulder press after. For the pop jack to squats, I started with them normally but switched to frogger squats after the first block. And instead of doing sprinter sit-ups, I did regular ones since the rotation is tough for me to do.
The floor work was tough and felt like we had endless burpees and squats, but I was glad to not have to worry about my should hurting too much. I did have to be careful with the shoulder presses, but the soreness and pressure I had in my shoulder wasn’t happening while working out. And I was right that being at the workout put me in a better mood for the rest of the day.
Friday’s workout was 3 partner workout. I got to work with one of the people from my triple buddy challenge and it was a really interesting workout. Even though there were 3 people in each group (one on the floor, one on the treadmill, and one on the rower), the pacer was always either the treadmill or rower. There was a distance to do on each and whoever finished first initiated the switch.
The treadmill distances were between .2 miles and .1 miles (each block got shorter) and the rower distances were between 650 meters and 350 meters (again, each block got shorter). When I was the person on the treadmill, I always finished before the rower person so I started the switch. And when I was on the rower, the treadmill person finished first so I never did the full row that we were supposed to do. But that’s ok because I was working so hard and didn’t mind missing a little bit of the distance on the rower.
On the floor, each block had its own exercises and we just worked through them whenever we were on the floor. The first block had lots of ab dolly work with push ups to knee tucks, rollouts, pikes, and hamstring work. The second block was mainly exercises on the straps with full body pull ups, tricep extensions, lunges into Y raises, jump squats. And the last block was mainly core work with double crunches, toe reaches, torso rotations, and plank pull throughs.
Even though the treadmill and rower distances were different each block, we seemed to pretty much do 2 rotations through all the stations for each block. These types of partner workouts are tough, but they are also so motivating because I don’t want to let my partners down. The only time I was taking breaks was on the floor, but I didn’t do that too often because I wanted to make sure I was doing as much of the floor work as possible to not slack off. Sometimes it’s annoying to do my workout and then be stuck sitting at my desk for several hours to work, but this time I was grateful for the break.
Saturday’s workout was a strength based class and I was feeling a little bit nauseous. I’m not sure if this was due to hormonal nausea or because I splurged a bit too much with food the day before, but whatever the cause was I knew that being on the bike was the better option. I think I’m starting to like doing strength based classes on the bike because I can do more work with the resistance levels than I can with inclines on the treadmill.
There were 3 blocks that all had similar patterns. We had some push and base paces at inclines (or higher resistance level for me) and some moments where everyone was a power walker with a really high incline. The first time everyone had that power walking moment, I decided to really go for it with the resistance on the bike. Normally I don’t go that much higher than level 10, but this time I went to 15. My legs felt like they were moving through jello, but I managed to do the work at that resistance. Each block the incline (or resistance) went down so I didn’t have to do anything that hard again. But I did still keep some of the minutes at higher resistance levels than I usually would use.
On the floor, we had the chance to do an interesting challenge. For the first 3 blocks, we had 2 exercises. The second exercise was always some type of core work. But for the first exercise we did it twice in a row. The first time, we only had 5 reps so we were encouraged to go really heavy with the weight. The second time, we had 15 reps and used a weight that we normally would use.
The first block was a hip hinge low row and I know that my challenge weight is usually 35lb. But when I do that, we have 10 reps so I went up to 40lb. It was really hard and I couldn’t do 5 in a row without taking a break, but I did it. And for the 15 reps I did 20lb. The next block was an overhead shoulder press, but because I’m dealing with some shoulder pain I just stuck with 20lb for 20 reps because I couldn’t go heavier without causing pain. And the third block was hammer curls and I went with 30lb for the 5 reps and 20lb for the 15 reps. The last block was just doing the 5 rep exercises over again and I kept the same weights I had used before.
I feel like this week of workouts gave me some fun opportunities to push and challenge myself and I really went for it! I also figured out when I might have been going a bit too hard, but understanding my limitations is a good thing too. I didn’t necessarily improve on all the challenges I had, but I did on many of them which is always nice. And I also know that I’ll have a chance to do these again and hopefully I’ll have improvement by that point.
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