What Was Your Work Out Today?

Normally, I've been doing an easy cardio day on Thursday, but Golf season ended last week (which was Thursday night). Since I haven't been to the gym in like, well, forever, I thought I'd switch out my golf night for a gym night away from home -- I work from home so I'm always at home!

The issue is, I keep my lifting and hard cardio days the same, so even though I did a harder cardio session on Tuesday, did another today. With all that going through my head, I programmed the interval workout wrong -- I put in 4 X 2K with only one minute rest (not 3 like it's supposed to be). Just said heck with it and went with it. Ended up finishing with a 2:11 average. Not bad considering the last round, with three minute recoveries was only 2:10. Brutal cardio workout!

Going to do a bit heavier weights tonight. Been doing tons of reps of lighter to middle of the road weights. Will take advantage of the gym to go heavier now. Although we're still members at Planet Fitness -- not a fan. Very, very hard to even get a dumbbell in the one I go to, much less any free weight benches -- they are never, ever open. The two or three they have always have someone planted in them for the entire duration of the time that I go, so I'm relegated to mostly machines.

Might have to break down this year and get some heavier equipment at home. I have really heavy KBs and Adjustable Dumbbells up to 55 lbs each, but nothing like a heavy barbell for benches, squats or deadlifts (or a rack/cage). I'd like a Landmine setup because they are so versatile.

Went to the gym last night. Enjoyed it for a nice change of pace.

A few things I missed -- inner/outer leg machines, leg press, incline situp bench. And the benches (at least in the dumbbell section) were mostly open, so that was a pleasant surprise. Sore this AM, moreso in my shoulders and chest/arms. Did a lot of heavier flies, probably why. Looking forward to an easy cardio day today.

C25K: Week 6 Day 2… CHECK!

Sunday should be fun. 22 min run no stops.😳. Bring it on!

Back on the river for the 5th day in a row, this time rowing bow in the double for the just slightly under 7k.

We kept it pretty-easy steady state, because on top of leg fatigue I slept abysmally last night (worse than my usual terrible sleep, even) and was feeling that; my double partner had spent 6 hours driving yesterday, so was in favor of gentle-ish work, too. Harmony (and moderate pace) prevailed.

That'll be it for formal exercise today, I'm thinking. River again tomorrow should put me well over the 40k on water I was hoping to get in this week, and I'm betting there'll be at least one quad with people who want to do power pieces.

nossmf wrote: »

Lietchi wrote: »

Didn't help my stress level like running does...

Really? Personally I find it VERY therapeutic to toss around heavy pieces of iron, grunting the entire time, lol.

(snip report of good workout that I wouldn't choose for myself, even though my choice may be dysfunctional)

Diversity makes the world interesting, I guess? I sure think it does: It would be tedious if we all thought the same things, y'know?

Not only does tossing around heavy pieces of iron not seem therapeutic psychologically to me, it actively kind of irritates me, definitely bores me . . . even though doing it is good for me and I'd never deny that.

I do try, sometimes, and it lasts for a while, but . . . ugh. 🤣

Sincerely, I'm glad you found your happy activity - I wish that for everyone. (Bonus for sure if both CV and strength boxes get ticked in the process, absolutely.)

Was looking forward to an easy cardio day with the first half on the rower. Started out and something didn't feel quite right in my left arm/shoulder. I've always had some problems on that side because I had a misdiagnosed broken collarbone that never healed correctly from high school football. Likely due to the heavy flies I did last night.

Anyway, after five minutes on the rower, just decided to do LateralX and Assault Bike for an hour, super easy. Enjoyed the change of pace and didn't sweat missing rowing. Nothing major, I'll be back at rowing on Sunday.

AM: Heavy leg day - leg press variations, single leg deads, split squat, goblet squat, walking lunges, curtsy lunges, hip thrusts,

PM: 3 miles easy run on TM at 1% incline. 1 mile intervals playing with incline and push pace.

I have a half marathon in 6 weeks so I should probably think about training.

Treadmill run today, quite late in the evening after getting back from my parents: 5.5km at 9kph.

Something went very wrong with my HR sensor, my average heart rate was supposedly 102 with a dip as low as 24bpm 😆

Day 6 in a row of on-water rowing - something I don't usually do - that was an attempt to get past 40k of rowing this week for the Concept 2 Dog Days of Summer Challenge (the only challenge of the year where water meters can be counted).**

Today was the usual roughly 7k, bow of the quad. It was cooler, so I called sequences of 10 power (strokes), 15 moderate, for much of the row, when I had a clear steering line, and when we were after warm-up/before cool-down. Looks like I even worked enough to get into Z4 for around 8 minutes (in peaks spread through the row, because of that interval format).

We had one of the new folks (from this year's learn-to-row class) in the quad with us for his first time in a quad since he did it at the beginning of the class. (It tends to be a discouraging experience then, because none of the rowers are competent yet, and it's tough to synchronize.) He did great, very smooth even in the first power piece, where a lot of people tend to get adrenalized and rush the slide or make technical errors. He's a pretty athletic guy, though. I think he had fun.

** I'm a low few thousand over that, not sure exactly how much because I have a few hundred walking meters in my total: I forgot to stop the workout on my Garmin before walking boats/oars up to the boathouse a couple of times. Since I only need 40K, and Garmin saw 45,948m, I'm not going to worry about it - I didn't walk an extra 4,948m on the rowing-workout clock!

Biking ended up around the usual weekly total, at 41 point something miles, too. I'll be glad to go back to normal volume this coming week - that took more time than I really want to devote routinely, even though the fitness side of it was fine - just a mild challenge, which is a good/fun thing. Nice to know it's manageable.

Six of us rode one of my long routes this morning with the goal of prepping a friend for the Chattanooga bike course. We covered 81 miles in just under 5 hours, a 17mph average. The ride included 4200 ft of climbing, some in the first 15 miles, with the bulk done in the middle of the ride. The final 20 miles is a slight downhill, which made the trip home fast and fun.

While I'm not a strong climber and struggle to stay with the group on some of the long climbs, I felt good today and did my share of pulling. Now I'm good for nothing but couch time and lots of salty foods for the rest of the day.

Doing my lifting sets this AM and I've come to realize I might have to give up rowing for a while. I seem to have developed either "trigger finger" or arthritis so bad on my left middle finger (and, no, I haven't been flipping anyone off recently! ) that it's gotten to be super painful to straighten at times.

Going to finish my reps this morning and then do Assault Bike and LateralX for my hard interval workout today. Much less gripping on those machines than on the rower. I'll see how a couple of week break goes for me. I think I can still manage/workaround on lifting.

Yoga and 6K run

Did a solid interval workout on the Assault Bike. 12 X 90 second sprints/60 seconds recovery and then a C/D on the LateralX. Finally hit over 90% of max HR on last interval. It's hard to hit 90% on such short sprints. Much easier on 4 plus minute intervals.

Was mostly able to get away without aggravating my sore finger by gripping. Either held a loose grip or just did legs.

Back to the usual 7k-ish in the quad, but rowing stroke this time. I'm not a natural stroke, so spend the whole row counting "in . . . out . . . three . . . four . . . in" in my head! But it was fun. Only in the 70s F, but humidity was over 90% first thing this morning.

Obviously that percentage drops as the air warms, but it was still humid during the row. I've mentioned before that I sweat horrifyingly much. Today, my oar grips got so wet that they were slippery, maybe some accumulated sunscreen in there with the sweat. The only way I could feather, eventually, was by seriously overgripping, especially on the left side - not good, in various ways.

We didn't do intervals today, due to combination of the humidity and our least confident bow rower being in bow not wanting to call them . . . but I was grateful because I think I would've lost control of my left oar handle at some point during power pieces.

I brought my oars home to deep scrub-wash the grips - it was an adventure getting the 8-foot-plus oars into my smallish and twisty-pathed house! Yeah, I could take them apart, but it's a pain.

@MikePfirrman, sympathies on the trigger finger/arthritis situation: I hope you can find improvement. I have episodes of trigger finger in my left ring finger, where I can't straighten it at all without using my other hand. It seems to happen mostly when I'm gripping tightly with that hand, so relaxing my rowing grip did help, in my case. (Also helped my rowing in other ways, which is why I pursued it - the reduced trigger finger incidents were an unexpected happy side effect. 😆) That said, it did seize up today, as a consequence of circumstances mentioned above.

@drmwc, I'm happy to hear you've tested negative and are able to be out and about again. Your photos are lovely! I rarely see our herons so high off the water here - they usually seem to be down near the shallows where the snacks hang out. 😉 That's a great image of the one on Diana with the dramatic sky behind!