Finished day 2 this morning...Plyometrics which is essentially jumping, running and squatting. By the way, I started to feel effects from the workout yesterday...soreness in the shoulders/back and under my arms.
As I mentioned before, I was worried about my right knee. When I do a squat, I feel some pain as I approach 45 degrees either going up or down. It is just pain in that small area/range of motion of the squat...not really below or above it. The same pain is in the same range when I do leg presses or leg extensions.
Just like yesterday, I approached today's workout with caution. I didn't know what the hell I was getting into, so I didn't want to blow out my knee in the first 5 minutes. Throughout the workout, I went a little slower and didn't squat as low or jump as high. That turned out to be a good decision as my knee survived. But even if I didn't have knee problems, it is honestly too much to expect to think you can do this kind of workout right away unless you are some type of professional athlete. It is just way too intense at first.
I wore a heart monitor today. Yesterday I used a method to determine my max heart rate which ended up being 204. I set up my HM to record the 70-80% range. I should have picked 80-90% because I was always above the target range. Every time I looked at the watch, I was around 174 bpm. After the whole workout, the HM said I burned 990 calories. Holy cow. And that is with me modifying the workout to make it easier!
I saw right away in the warmup that my knee would have problems. One of the warmups was some type of lunge and it was putting too much stress on my knee. So I decided right then to take it a little easy.
Another thing that helped the knee was where I was working out. I do my workout upstairs in a loft, just a few feet from sleeping children and sleeping wife. During the workout Tony tells you to always land soft "like a cat." Well, I'm forced to land soft as landing hard would shake the whole house and wake everyone up. And those soft landings, although demanding, were easy on the knees.
The workout was pretty exhausting but I felt really good about it. I know as I work on it more, I'll approach the actual moves they are doing. I think this will actually strengthen the muscles around my knee and possibly make the pain decrease. There was only one move I didn't do. It was where you jumped up and quickly pulled your heels into the back of your thigh and then landed again. After just a few of those, my knee say "NO!" and I listened to it. I actually had to take a break for a moment to determine if I could continue.
Looking forward to tomorrow.
