It's been a whirlwind of a week around these parts. I worked most of last week, which kept me busy, but now I'm officially on vacation!!! We leave for Jamaica early early tomorrow morning. One of my best friends is getting married so we decided to turn it into a little mini-cation for us. Cannot wait for some sand, sun and R&R. I plan to eat all the delicious food, not get out of the pool and maybe try to get some workouts in while I'm at it...mostly because I know my back wouldn't be too thrilled with lack of motion for almost an entire week. Plus I just don't feel ready to take a full vacation from the healthy habits yet. I just now started feeling like I'm getting back into the swing of things so I don't want to set myself back any further than I need to. We'll see how it goes.
Last week was a decent week! Eating wise I got a little off track. I changed things up a bit with what I was eating and it kind of threw my macros off, but by the time I figured it out, it was too late to try and get to the store to find things that would make up for it. So I spent a decent part of the week coming in under my macro counts. I also went out to eat one night unexpectedly after work with a friend. So it wasn't a bad week, just a little tough and I didn't have the constitution to fight with MyFitnessPal much. One of our meals was some delicious grilled steak from Seven Bridges Farm though and it was delicious. We got a nice flat iron and threw it right in the sous vide and then finished it on the grill. Could eat that stuff for days. The only thing that was truly disappointing was the Balanced Body. For some reason the meals I got from them in our last order just weren't as good as they usually are. I don't know if they went bad or just wasn't a good pick, but I was barely getting through like half of them for lunch before I couldn't take it anymore. So that didn't help the macro counting either. Hopefully our next order with them is a little more delicious. Otherwise I'll have to go back to doing that crazy thing called making my own lunches.
Working out felt amazing. I ended up going to the gym Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. I intended to go Thursday, but I decided sleep was much better so I made it up on Saturday instead. I woke up Saturday morning feeling great and I basically said what the heck, I've been hunting down a 4th day in a week for the past 2 months and my back feels good, so if I don't do it now I never will.
Monday's workout was:
4x5-6 Bulgarian Split Squats
then
4 rounds for time:
- 12 burpees
- 200' farmer carry
- 1 mile bike
The split squats as usual felt terrible, but not as terrible as normal. I still did them with an empty barbell but I was kind of to the point where it was tempting to add just a little weight, even if it was 10 pounds. Not enough to actually try it though. It was good to feel just a little bit stronger though.
The workout was a beast. It was like having endurance Thursday on a Monday. My total time was 24:40. I ended up modifying the burpees to just 6 because my back started to feel them. The farmer carry I used 44 pound kettlebells. So really what made it feel so awful was that it was long. A mile on a bike for me takes just over 3 minutes so right off the bat I'm looking at 13-14 minutes just for that alone. BUT I found a pace and I stuck with it for all 4 rounds, which is basically unheard of for me. It's always been one of my struggles, even when I was more in shape. I would go out strong and die halfway through something. But this time I just cranked on through it and stayed consistent. So that is definitely something for me to be proud of. Maybe someday down the road I'll add back the extra burpees and see how long that takes.
Tuesday's workout was:
20 min to find 1RM snatch
then
For time
- 800m run
- 50 wall balls
So, I obviously didn't feel quite ready to be testing my snatch yet. But after having a conversation with my chiropractor where she told me if I don't get back into these lifts soon, I'll never get back to them, I decided to just do some quality work with low weight. So I kept 55 pounds on the bar and just worked on power snatches and full snatches both from the floor and the hang position. It didn't feel too bad. I definitely felt weak.
The workout took me 7:17. I guess these Tuesday workouts are meant to be sprints. I kind of suspected, but no one confirmed it until this week. So basically we were told to do whatever modifications we needed to do to be able to sprint through it and get it done under 8 minutes. I obviously don't run so I modified to the bike with the intention of going a mile. Well I ended up surprising the hell out of myself and banged out that mile in 2:46 like it was nothing. I won't be repeating that anytime soon, but it's still pretty cool! The wall balls can just go die in a hole somewhere. I used the orange ball, which is 12 pounds and ended up being hard enough. I didn't do them against the wall like I usually do. I was at the rig where you have to hit a circular target. And man that target is fucking high. It took me a good amount of reps to even figure out how to get the ball that high. Basically my strategy was to just not die so I did sets of 5, partially because throwing the ball that high was exhausting and because I wanted to keep a good pace without dying. And honestly, my pace stayed pretty consistent on this one too. Maybe I'm actually starting to pick up some endurance in all of this!
Thennnnnn after that my quads were pretty smoked. Between all the biking and the squats, I basically took the stairs until about Thursday. For some reason too, my sleeping has been super out of whack for the past couple weeks. It's alternating between me being up between the hours of 3-4 every morning regardless of if I was going to the gym or not, or I was sleeping like the dead because of all the stress I've been feeling. It was getting rather irritating. So when the alarm went off on Thursday morning and I was still dead asleep, I decided to take advantage of it and get a couple more hours in. It was much needed. I felt a little more human after that.
Friday's workout was:
4x5-6 single leg deadlift with kettlebells
then
4 rounds for quality
- 10 alternating goblet reverse lunges
- 5 toes to bar
- 25 cal bike/row/ski
I love it when they program quality days in. It's so relaxing but you still get a good workout in. For the single leg deadlifts I didn't use any weight. It was my first time attempting a deadlift in any form since hurting myself and I knew it was a movement I struggled with even before this all happened. If you ever want to know if your back muscles are tight, just do a single leg deadlift because you'll feel them. Eventually I loosened up though and it wasn't so horrible. Really the biggest part of the struggle is trying to keep your balance. Don't really have much to say about the actual workout since we did it at our own pace. For the toes to bar I just did straight leg raises. And the reverse lunges we did with kettlebells. They didn't feel too bad but man did the booty hurt the next day. And don't ask me why considering after all the biking I did over the week, but I gravitated more towards the bike to get the calories done. It wasn't fast by any means and my quads certainly had some choice thoughts about it. 25 calories at the speed I was doing added up to just over a mile, so not too horrible.
Saturday morning, like I said, I woke up feeling like a champ, so I decided to go to the gym. I was apprehensive about it because it was a hero workout and it basically resembled the workout that messed me up in the first place, but I decided to go for it anyway. So the workout itself was:
4 sets
- 2-3 kettlebell clean and press
- 5-6 bent over rows
then
"DT" - 5 rounds of:
- 12 deadlift
- 9 hang power clean
- 6 shoulder to overhead
The strength portion wasn't too bad. When I first saw it I didn't realize how possibly taxing it would be on my back, but it was also a really good opportunity to work on getting the right muscles activated considering I don't get much opportunity to work slowly with a kettlebell. I ended up using the 35 pound, which was a pretty good weight. It was just heavy enough that I felt like I was doing something productive, but light enough that I was keeping the right form.
For the workout, I chose to do it partner style. It was actually kinda funny because I partnered up with my chiropractor. The prescribed weight was 105, which was laughable. I ended up with 65, which was borderline light. The way we were supposed to do it was to alternate rounds and with that weight I was just tearing through the rounds without an issue. But again, like all things nowadays, had to think about the back. What a nagging bitch. I felt good through the 3rd round, but after that I could feel it getting tired and tensed up. But I got through it. Our final time was 15:33. I think it would have been interesting to see how I did solo, but I was very happy doing it with a partner this time.
After that one though, I was feeling pretty sore and tired. I was really proud of getting to the gym 4 times in one week. I feel like I picked a really good week that was not only good for working on my endurance and lower body strength, but it allowed me to really work on movements that I had been avoiding because of my injury. That's not to say it felt great doing them. I definitely felt it Saturday and most of yesterday. It wasn't a debilitating pain like I had reinjured myself, so I was at least thankful for that. But it was also a little more significant than just simple muscle soreness.
Today we went back for one more day of fun before we leave for Jamaica. The workout was:
4 sets
- 4-6 back squat w/ tempo
- 6-8 kettlebell bent over row
then
10 min AMRAP
- 5 deadlift
- 7 pull ups
- 9 wall ball
I was so stoked to be working on some back squats. I love me some back squats. Except the part where 135 pounds felt heavy.....not happy about that. To put it in perspective, my one rep back in like 2014 was 255 pounds and here I was struggling with 135. To also be fair, we were doing it with a tempo, but still. It also felt super awkward because we've been doing so much work in the front rack position lately I've forgotten how to squat with something on my back. I'll get the muscle memory back at some point though. The workout pretty much smoked my back. I was already feeling tight from Saturday, but I just think it ended up being too much deadlifting too soon. I used 85 pounds, which felt really good the first 3 rounds. I was cranking through this thing. The wall balls weren't even getting me down (shocking, I know). And then I got to my 4th round and my back basically just said nope, not doing it. It took me a very long time to get through 5 reps on that one but luckily the workout ended before I had to start a 5th round. I think it was just a little too much all at once. I was really stoked after Friday and Saturday, but I just didn't have a third day of deadlifting in me. It's fine. I've done a lot in the past week and worked a lot of muscle groups so I'm not too worried about it. I'll get in some short, low impact workouts in Jamaica and we'll call it good.
Well I don't have much else to report. Time to go finish up some packing. I'll see y'all in September!!!
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