Workouts Eight, Nine, Ten and Eleven: Hurty Quads, but Good Stuff

 I've been busy like crazy the last week, so I haven't had time to post, but I've been working out on schedule and enjoying it. Patrick and I are back home now from a trip to Nashville for a professional conference. Last Monday and this evening, we worked out at our normal gym here at home.

Last Wednesday's scheduled workout we did at a Planet Fitness in Nashville because Patrick was going to be using their weight machines and wanted to be using the machines he was used to. (They weren't exactly the same, but they were close.) Last Saturday, Patrick was doing a cardio day, so we worked out at the fitness room in our hotel. Our hotel actually had an excellent fitness room -- the only thing I had any trouble with was the pushups because I'm still at the hip-high support level (about a 45 degree incline maybe) and there wasn't much at the right height.


I'm getting to a point where I need to think about what I want to change to in a few weeks. I've got two more times with each workout and it will be time to start a new workout -- the next stage has two to four sets of eight reps each. So the weights will be higher and the reps lower. Which will be pretty cool. I'll probably change up some of the exercises too -- reverse lunges instead of split squats, possibly some sort of cable machine row rather than dumbbell rows, etc. I need to work out what I want to start doing.

I had a problem last Wednesday with Workout B -- it involves split squats, which are normally not much of a problem. Unfortunately, my quads were killing me (and still are a bit). One leg got sore when I stood up from sitting on the floor before we left home. The other got sore when I stood up from doing some warm-ups on the mat on Wednesday. It wasn't a good feeling when they got hurt, but I don't think anything is really wrong. They only hurt when I did something like a lunge (which you can see here) -- with all my weight on one leg and the other behind me a step and the knees bent. The leg that hurt, for the record (and my mother's peace of mind) was the *down* leg which doesn't do nearly as much work.

Anyway, when I got to doing the split squats last Wednesday, they just didn't feel at all good, so I did regular squats instead. When I worked out again on Saturday morning, with Workout A which doesn't have split squats but does have regular squats, I gave one try at doing the split squats and did regular squats again. (Actually, my warm-up sequence has a sort of lunge-y thing in it and I knew from that I wouldn't be able to do split squats.) I was back to Workout B today, though, and was able to do split squats, though my range of motion wasn't entirely where I'm used to it being.

I'll just keep going with the "pain free range of motion" thing, and if it's too small a range for me to really be working my glutes, I'll do regular squats until they don't hurt anymore.

The weird, and maybe interesting, thing is that it really does seem like the problem is more with the stretch in the less-working leg. The initial pain felt pretty sharp and immediate (and lousy) but only when doing that kind of move -- lunges, split squats, reverse squats, standing up from the floor one leg at a time. Any other kind of move is fine.

I will say that whatever it is that's up with my quads is slowing me down a tad with the Intervals of Insanity part of each workout -- especially last Wednesday when they were at their worst, I couldn't go nearly as fast for my 20 second intervals because my legs just wouldn't generate as much power.. Though what that meant was that I could do eight of the intervals rather than the five I'd been doing.

All of these issues seem to be resolving, along with the pain, now. Which is excellent.

Wednesday will be Workout A -- which doesn't involve split squats. The Step-ups I do with that workout *never* caused me any problems, even when my quads were most weird. Which kind of means I have an extra couple of days off for my legs to recover before I tax them at all again. Hopefully by Saturday, my quads will be even better and more back to normal.

Anyway, we're back to normal -- today's workout was at our usual gym at (approximately) our usual time. It was nice to be back. Next workout is scheduled for Wednesday -- goal for the workout: is to get better at everything, Without hurting my quads.