I Can Barely Walk

I can barely walk. No, I did not hurt myself further. I went to the gym after about 9 weeks away! Since my shoulder injury, I have done some exercise at home, but I haven’t been back to my Crossfit box. Given that I can only do lower body exercises, and can’t put any load on my right shoulder, there really is no point in even trying to modify the workouts, in my opinion. After a few sessions of doing the Thin Thighs workout, I’m no longer sore. In hindsight, I could have just done more than one set of the exercises, but I joined a gym instead. I had two reasons for that decision.

The Workout

I went to the gym equipped with this workout on bodybuilding.com. My plan was to workout for 1 hr, with 20 minutes of cardio following the MAF method at the end. By the time I got started, I actually had 45 min for my workout. I did 3 min on the step machine along with some squats and lunges to warm up before moving on to my workout:

• 2 sets of 20 reps each using 30kg on adductor/abductor machine
• 4 sets of 12 squats with 9kg dumbbells 
• 4 sets of 6 reps per leg alternating single leg deadlifts with 4kg dumbbells
• 4 sets of 6 reps superset wide stance/narrow stance leg press 70kg/90kg/110kg/110kg

I tried to do leg curls but I couldn’t adjust the machine properly so I gave up on that. With only 17 min left of my workout time, I skipped the rest of the lower body workout to fit in some cardio. I walked on the treadmill, using the incline to keep my heart rate around 138 bpm. Overall, according to Endomondo, paired with my Polar heart rate monitor, I had an average heart rate of 145 bpm for my 56 minutes workout.

The Second Reason for Going to the Gym

The main reason that I chose this particular gym is because of the infrared sauna. You have to schedule your use at least 30 min in advance so that’s why I needed to finish my workout by a set time. I was allowed to use the room for 1 hr, with the sauna scheduled to be on for 40 min. That was fine with me. I’m actually not a fan of saunas. I decided to go to the sauna because of a podcast (which inspire most of my schemes). Chalene Johnson was talking in a recent episode of her podcast about her hamstring injury and the benefits of infrared saunas. After some research, I added it to my list of alternative therapies for my shoulder. My Finnish friends will scoff at this but the temperature of the sauna is 60ºC, which is relatively comfortable. Given that I had the sauna all to myself, I set my timer for 20 min and laid down listening to (what else) a podcast. To be honest, I was a bit worried that I would fall asleep but figured that the timer would wake me up if that happened.

3 Days Later

I’m still sore, particularly my inner thighs. Maybe I didn’t need to do so many sets/reps of the exercises. Every time I return to the gym after a long absence, I am incredibly sore for days. You’d think that by now I’d have learned to do a bit less weight or reps or sets. Is it optimism or madness? I have not been back to the gym but I’m walking every day to try to reduce the stiffness. I brought out my Rumble Roller but haven’t actually used it since touching my leg with my hand hurts! Today, I plan to do some yoga or Pilates but will wait til I’m past the hobble stage to return to the gym.