My "Training" Week... Noodle Arms

My arms hate me right now. Being that I'm "off" most lower-body workouts for a while, and being that I'm obsessed with exercise--yea, I said it--I've done a lot of swimming and upper-body strength training this week. I can do moderate-intensity rowing (can't push off too hard w the knee) and some hip/glut/leg exercises too so it's not completely out of balance.

Anyways, I thought I'd provide a glimpse into this past week -- i.e. what sort of training you can do with a knee injury, or another leg injury for that matter.* It's major mellow in terms of endurance training, but it's enough to make me feel like I'm still doing something:

MONDAY
1. Yoga class
60 min with crazy instructor who puts together some haaaard routines.

TUESDAY
1. Masters Swim
6 a.m. "hearty breakfast" of 3,000 yds with some decent pulling sets
2. At-Home Stuff
30 min of yoga, PT exercises, foam rolling

3. Strength Circuit Routine**
10 min functional warmup

The Meat
20 minutes of as many rounds as you can do...
5 "jump" pullups
10 pushups
15 air squats (allowable for me because non-weight-bearing and modified to quarter squats on some rounds)

I did 19 rounds + a warmup round so 100 pullups, 200 pushups and 300 squats. My arms were sore forever. I really thought I wasn't going to be able to do one more pushup toward the end. My legs were unaffected by air squats (i.e. that's not enough to make me sore).

WEDNESDAY
1. Hour Swim
Main set of a lot of 200s, w last 15 min kicking focus, yardage-lost count?

2. Strength Circuit Routine
15 min / four rounds of...
10 knee-2-elbows
15 side leg lifts in side plank position
30 split-leg situps
20 bridges with weight
10 single-leg bridges
10 supermans

3. At-Home Stuff
30 min of yoga/stretching + foam rolling


THURSDAY
1. Strength Circuit Routine
10 min functional warmup
500 meter row

The Meat
25 minutes as many rounds as you can of...
10 ea. DB plank row***
20 split-leg situps
10 ea. single-arm shoulder press seated on floor (sitting on floor incorporates a lot of core, hip and leg strength/stability)
250 m row

I did 7.5 rounds and 2,300 m of rowing all together. On sore arms. Ouch.

2. At-Home Stuff
yoga/stretching, PT exercises (including my fav- lateral walks with band), foam rolling

FRIDAY
1. Lake Swim (my favorite!)
3,000 m with main set of 2 x 1200
4 x 2 min kicking in place at the end

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That's where I'm at now. Over 10k of swimming and rowing alone already. More swimming on tap for this weekend even if my arms are less than stoked on that. They'll just have to suffer along.

I also didn't piss off my knee with any of this stuff, and it feels a lot better than it did last weekend. But don't worry, I'm still not going to go do anything stupid.




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*If you have a knee or leg injury, please consult an expert/your doctor before doing any of these exercises or workouts above.

**Strength-circuit routines are meant to be done at high intensities with little or no rest for the full duration. It's all about fitting in as much work as possible.

***DB plank rows = get into plank position and hold dumbbell in each arm. Lift DB bringing elbow up, one arm at a time. Basically it's a bent-over DB row but in plank position so major core activation.