When Workouts Go Bad [Turning sandbags into a healthy snack]

Wardrobe malfunction. Three injured Gym Buddies. Lame exercises. And two broken nails! Monday’s workout – and I do not use this term lightly – sucked eggs. Oh and the best part:

What is the number one comment people say when they see us working out with our sandbags? (Besides “Day-um, girl!” – only got that one once, today, from a burly black guy but it made me smile so I had to share. See Craigslist Creeper? That’s the way to compliment a lifting lady!) “Gee, I hope one of those bags doesn’t break open!” Well, nervous Nellies, the worst has happened.

The good news is that it wasn’t my supercool Ultimate Sandbag – I don’t think an atomic explosion could phase that thing – but rather the one I made out of my kid’s old backpack and 30 pounds of wheat. The bad news is that 30 pounds of wheat makes an awful mess. The less bad news is that at least wheat kernels are easier to pick up one by one than sand would have been.

Monday’s sandbag workout was a total Fail from beginning to end. It happens sometimes. Whether you’re just not feeling it that day or you have an equipment malfunction or the workout is lamesauce (or all of the above, like us), some days you think you would have been better off skipping it and watching some Teen Mom. And since this does not happen to us very often, we all took it very badly.

“My elbow hurts!” “This sandbag’s too heavy!” “I can’t remember what move I’m supposed to be doing!” “My butt still hurts from the last workout!” “My new pants won’t stop riding up into my crack and I don’t have any spare hands to pick my wedgie and I can’t tell if they’re trying to cop a feel or check me for internal hemorrhoids! (oooh, foreshadowing!)” The Gym Buddies and I were a cacophony of whine.

The source of our general grumpiness (besides those stupid pants) is that we are having a tough time with the sandbag workouts. It’s not that they’re too challenging – them’s fightin’ words to us (see the fact that we won the Fit Blogger challenge again woohoo!) – but that they’re a) very injury prone and b) hard to make an entire workout out of. I’m not giving up on them – we still have 3 weeks of this left, sigh – but we are going to lower our weight and mix them up with some more traditional weight moves. Three of us have really sore elbows, of all things to injure, and now thanks to Gym Buddy Krista’s wheat-smashing spree, we’re down a bag.

Usually a bad workout can be redeemed by some good stretching-mat gabbing but continuing our bad streak I decided to try out some new yoga inversions I found on YogaDownload.com (looove this site!). I did a straddle split press to headstand to a backbend to standing up – like this but starting from a straddle split:

I stood up triumphant until I saw Gym Buddy Krista’s face. “Do not ever do that move again,” she said sternly. “At least not in those pants!” I looked down. Ohmygoodness. The world was now my gynecologist. I sat down embarrassed and crossed my legs demurely for the rest of the time until I could run home and find the receipt to return those suckers.

Once home, still in a funk, I realized I now had a crap ton of wheat that had to be used immediately. Using my amazing Vitamix, I ground it up into fresh whole-wheat flour! (Like store bought, but crunchier!) And then I baked. And I baked and I baked. I ended up with whole wheat bread (thanks Reader Shellie for the recipe!), rolls and biscuits (that we’re calling johnny cakes because they are so unlike a biscuit as to be unrecognizable). This made me feel all frugal and stuff – from the gym floor to Jelly Bean’s high chair to my kitchen floor, ah the circle of life! – and perked me right up.

Showered, de-pantsed (or rather, re-pantsed in a less evil pair), and full of warm bread with a snuggly baby on my lap, I decided that the workout wasn’t a total loss. The whole point of doing my Experiments is to see what works and what doesn’t and this made it clear that I need to go back to the drawing board with the ‘bags. The problem is not with the ‘bags – they’re just a workout tool – the problem is with our form and the way we’re using them. Plus we honed our fine motor skills picking up hundreds of little grains and we learned a valuable lesson about workout pants made out of too-thin material.

Have you ever had a workout go bad? How did you turn it into a positive? Have you ever had a piece of equipment totally fail on you?