TL;DR I was sick last week and now I’m back with a vengeance.
Last week was not the Power Week I intended to have in a burst of New Year’s fervor. My cold was not unusual strength, but it drained my energy to the point where I felt like all I could do was work and go home to sleep. And that just made me depressed on top of tired. I had Big Plans! For example, it was Free Fitness week in the Chicago Parks system and I was going to check out a few pools (because they were free), but I only ended up going to 1 class. When I did have the energy I took advantage of some of those SELF workouts I mentioned, which surprisingly came in handy for days I didn’t feel up to putting in 45+ minutes running but could handle weights and such at my own pace.
It’s hard for me to know when I’m being lazy and when I really, truly need a break. I think I just worry that if I start to take a break, I will tumble all the way down Slack Mountain and become sedentary overnight (impossible). I cut my run short on Wednesday because I felt overheated and suddenly tired, and in retrospect I think I probably had a fever for the next few days after that. On Saturday I skipped my long run, but I felt so guilty that I worked out anyway (and likely pushed a little too hard based on how I felt afterward).
Today I estimate I’m about 90% well but I feel comparatively at 1,000%. I didn’t have to take NyQuil to sleep! I cough only around twice an hour! Being well is so great. Anyway, recap:
MONDAY: SELF Bodyweight HIIT (fun); Zumba at Chicago Parks (Maggie Daley Fieldhouse).
WEDNESDAY: 2.5-mile run -- really weak, no energy
THURSDAY: PT session
SATURDAY: SELF strength workouts: Hustle + Sweat and Toned + Ready (I don’t make up these names, I only report them).
SUNDAY: Breaking Down the Barre workshop (more below); SELF Power Intervals w/ a little extra running (~1.8 miles)
Besides Free Fitness week, I also signed up for a free workshop at a Pure Barre studio called Breaking Down the Barre. Instead of flowing from one set to the next, we covered the major exercises in each class with specific cues and demonstrations (“you should feel this in X muscle group, and often when people do this wrong they do Y or Z”). I found it very helpful, especially in modifying moves so I’m still getting the benefit of what they were intended to strengthen, but so I can do them instead of flopping out of the pose.
That said. Going to barre classes, while I think they could be very helpful, are a really bad body-image space for me right now. I can’t point to a comment or a moment that has made me feel this way, but more often than not I leave feeling fat, inflexible and like a failure. I have tried a few different studios but invariably end up in the same place, which makes me think some of it is in my head. But usually, I am the biggest person in the room, which I notice more than if I were, say, the biggest person lining up for a running event. I think some of it is related to the branding and emphasis on leanness and toning and other words that emphasize skinniness as a goal. (Example: In the workshop, the head instructor kept talking about “teaching our abs to lay flat” as a goal of the workout, which I’m not sure is possible but is one way of saying “getting a flat stomach.”)
Given that I don’t deserve to feel bad about my body consistently, it would make the most sense to look into streaming or DVD options if I went that route, or do other exercises that also emphasize flexibility and complex muscle interaction (yoga? Yoga with weights? Pilates?)