What kind of results do you get from Orangetheory if you go 3-4 days a week? originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.
Answer by Richard Gobea, Accounting Manager at Quora, on Quora:
I’ve been a member of my local Orangetheory studio for a little over year now. The first month was a slow ramp up starting with two workouts a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays). I settled at this frequency to ease into the initial soreness and recovery period that my body required. This was expected as I had no exercise regimen in place other than walking up and down the stairs at work.
After about two weeks of trying different days and times I increased my workouts to three times a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) and kept it at that level for about three months. After that I switched to four days a week (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday) with an optional fifth day on the weekend to either make up for bad food choices during the week or to just start the weekend off right.
With this sort of progression, the results that I’ve noticed are as follows:
- Cardio: I’ve never really enjoyed running (at least beyond a short intense sprint). While I still am not the biggest fan of running, I’ve gone from barely being able to “run” 1/4 mile without stopping to gasp for breath to being able to run for twenty minutes straight in Base-Push-All Out format. On a personal achievement level, this is absolutely amazing to me and is one of the results that I can look back on and feel proud about. For quantifiable results, my one mile time started out at twelve-plus minutes, struggling at a five mile per hour pace. My most recent one mile time was down to nine minutes at a comfortable six-and-a-half to seven-and-a-half mile per hour pace.
- Strength (weights): Weight training (especially free weights) has always been super intimidating to me. When I used to go to a traditional gym, I typically avoided this section and stuck to the cardio and weight machines. Now I can say I’m comfortable with dumbbells (fifteen to forty pounds depending on the exercise), TRX bands, bosu balls and the ab dolly. One of the easiest results I’ve seen in this section is going from struggling with fifteen pound dumbbells for dead lifts to forty-plus pounds.
- Rowing: The rowing component of the workout takes place on rowing machines (water filled rowers at my studio instead of air/fan rowers). This was something entirely new to me when I first started. The first month on this machine made me perhaps the sorest of any part of the OT workout. My studio offers a monthly “TRX & rowing workshop” which I took and made a night and day difference for my relationship with this machine. Results here are barely being able to row two hundred meters without stopping for a minute to being able to row up to two thousand meters in a Base-Push-All Out interval method and still looking forward to getting on the treadmill and hitting the weight room. This was a huge achievement realization for me looking back at one year with Orangetheory.
- Flexiblity: Like most guys, I came into the class being as flexible as a tree. A year in, I can say I still surprise myself with the sorts of things I can now do with minimal effort (full burpees, hand walkouts, ab dolly pikes and ab dolly knee tucks). Stretching out after class started out being just as difficult as the actual workout. Now, the stretching segment is the mind clearing and body ache relieving experience it should be.
- Weight: This has been the one touchy area for me where what I wanted/expected has now shifted. Going into Orangetheory my only goal was weight loss (both for my own self-esteem and at the strong suggestion of my doctor). A year in, I can say that my results here according to the scale are not what I want. I started out losing about fifteen pounds per the scale, but now have put that all back on. A part of this is entirely my doing and mainly controlled by a lack of a structured diet, but I believe part of this can also be attributed to the addition of muscle mass (see the three bullet points above and the one below). That being said, I’ve grown less reliant on the number from the scale and more dependent on other measures (having to buy a smaller belt, fitting into clothes I couldn’t a year or more ago, getting unsolicited comments from friends and family at how I look slimmer and more muscular).
- General/Other: Among the other things that I’ve noticed a year in:
- My overall mood has been greatly improved.
- Stress levels and the feeling of being overwhelmed at work and in life have greatly decreased.
- My self-esteem is a lot higher than it was before joining. Part of it is due to the changes that I’m seeing physically, but a larger portion of it are proving to myself that I could do this strenuous workout routine and continuously see performance improvements.
While your results may vary, my experience a year in seems to be pretty consistent to the other members I’ve talked to who have followed a similar frequency progression.
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