Orange

Sam wanted to go try a workout class so we went to Orange Theory together. I have always heard about it from friends and had no idea of what it entailed but was up for the challenge.

I was pleasantly surprised that it seemed to incorporate most of what I am currently doing in my daily workouts. Cardio mixed with weight / strength training.

They made us come 30 minutes early, which I told Sam – no way, try 20 minutes – and we still sat around but Sam and I were gabbing so it was fine.

They strapped a heart rate monitor around us and explained their whole “theory” of going into the orange zone for your heart rate. They want 10 to 20 minutes of your heart rate in the 84% to 91% zone so you can be effectively burning fat.

Okay cool.

I check out the monitors and see my resting heart rate around… I can’t remember but it was at 66 or 77. Fairly low. I look at Sam’s and see hers over 100. I want to say it was at 120 and we were just standing there. I asked her if she was nervous, and she laughed a little.

So we start out on the rowing machine, which I’m not super familiar with, but is obvious on how to work. (They did explain how to use it before we started!) We do that for a few minutes and I’m looking at my stats and I’m firmly in the gray zone while Sam is going into the green.

Okay fine. We do it for 5 minutes and then go over to the weight section. The monitors showing our stats are around the corner so I can’t see them. I’m slightly curious because I want to know what I’m at. I check my Apple watch and see my heart rate around 120 / 130 at different times but settling back down to over 115 as we work out.

We did about 20-30 minutes of weight training, similar to what I do every day. The music was loud, the instructor was fun, and I was keeping up. Push-ups will always suck but we were getting it done.

We transition over to the treadmill and we do a sprint for 5 minutes. They have a whole thing about going down to base (green) and then pushing to orange and then doing one minute to red.

I am totally GRAY. Is this thing even WORKING? I check my Apple watch to compare and I’m at 120/125 heart rate. I’m at 4.5 miles an hour jogging. I move up the incline.

The gal comes over to check on us and adjusts my monitor down to my forearm.

We do another treadmill sprint and I move up the incline again. I push the mph to 5.5 and I’m barely getting to 80% (green). And I also am jogging (sprinting?) on the treadmill which I feel REALLY uncomfortable with because ZOMG how do I get off? What if I throw up? No way.

At the end, she went over our stats. There were three new people. The guy was in the orange and red zone 90% of the time and was completely wrecked. Sam had 15 minutes in the orange zone (15 splats! Their logo and what they want to acheive/push) and had a perfect pyramid of green in the middle going down on either side, which meant that was a great workout for her.

I had zero orange splats! That made me laugh.

The good frame up here is that I work out every single day with cardio and I am built for endurance at this point. I have to really push myself to go out of my comfort zone and get my heart rate up from 66 to over 150.

Do I even WANT to do that, is my question? It’s bad to get into a rut, it’s always better to have a partner/accountability person to get you going, but I’m also keeping myself healthy.

The cool thing is that she told me about the heart rate zones on the Apple Watch. I had seen them during my workouts but never knew (or cared to dive in) where to find them. It’s on my Fitness ap of my phone, I can’t see them on the watch.

This morning I tried to deliberately push myself into the orange zone. It was hard. I start my precor on the steepest incline (level 17) already and I’m at a base of 7 resistance every day. I’m actually not sure how much the resistance goes up to but I had to push it up to a 9 to get my heart rate over 155 and that was not a comfortable place to be.

Plus doing that every day probably means I’d have to wash my hair every day? Who wants to do that!

But it was fun learning some new things about my body, fitness, and monitors!

Sam declined to join the gym she just wanted to do something different that morning but we both had a good time.