This week has been a complete nightmare to schedule training.
I have been sick in bed from Monday to Wednesday. Thursday I felt better, but as you know by now it's boxing day. Saturday, I was unexpectedly called to work, only getting back home late.
It's difficult to build a proper training schedule with only 2 days available. To make things more complex, week #3 is focused on a new session called Dione. It's a fairly demanding session, so repeating it twice at high-intensity on the same day was not really an option.
Given the circumstances, I extended Week #3 to include the following Monday.
[UPDATE Jan 2014 - Start]
Please note that this week some of the training content is elective.
In the training schedule below I chose to do the Dione workout. However, don't be surprised if you see on the Internet that other people have done Zeus instead. They simply chose to focus on Strength instead of Cardio.
[UPDATE Jan 2014 - End]
Thursday: Boxing training
Surprisingly good training, given that I had barely recovered for my sick days.
Friday: DIONE 37:03*
The Dione training is made of 3 rounds of:
- 75 Jumping Jacks
- 25 Burpees
- 50 Leg Lever
- 75 Jumping Jacks
- 50 Situps
- 25 Burpees
When I first glanced at it I smiled, thinking that it looked like a nice and easy session to be completed under 30 minutes. Jumping Jacks are basically a warm-up exercise, the session is focused on abs which I consider one of my strong points and the burpees repetitions remain reasonable (sets of 25 compared to 50 in Aphrodite).
It's only minutes before starting the training that I realized that the completion time of people that I'm following through the phone app ranged from 26 to 56 minutes.
26 minutes being the time of a guy who is 10 weeks ahead of me in the program, it became clear that completing Dione under 30mn, on the first attempt, would be impossible.
It actually took me 37'03 minutes to complete the exercise. Let's have a look at what makes Dione much harder than what it looks:
- Jumping jacks: as expected they are not physically challenging. It takes me 1 minute to do all 75. The challenge is that they just keep coming back (450 reps in total), so while they don't wear down your muscles they keep your Cardio high all the time. And because they are so quick to complete, they don't offer any opportunity for your body to recover.
- Abs: if you look carefully at the repetition pattern, the 2 exercises which are 100% abs focused (Leg levers & Situps) are only separated by a set of Jumping jacks. To say it differently: you do 50 repetitions of abs, "rest" for 1 minute and do another 50 reps. For a total of 300 abs reps during the 3 rounds. The overall workload is perfectly manageable, the difficulty is to maintain a fast pace all along.
- Burpees: another deceivingly simple exercise. Indeed there are only 25 repetitions, but twice per round. 150 burpees in total just like in Aphrodite. Besides, when you complete a round with 25 burpees, you have to follow-up with another 25 burpees in the next round. Once again, you only have 1 minute of Jumping Jacks to "rest" in-between.
To summarize Dione vs Aphrodite:
- same number of Burpees
- same number of Situps
- Squats are replaced by Leg Levers (which takes longer to complete and strains the same muscle group as Situps)
- 450 Jumping Jacks in bonus
Sunday: DIONE 37:18*
Results very close to my first attempt, but just below. No personal best this time. Every second matters...
Monday: DIONE 35:14* (personal best)
My first two encounters with Dione have taught me to respect this training. I focused on keeping the best pace possible during the abs, and was mentally ready for long, straining, Burpees sessions. It worked, I gained 2 minutes versus the previous day results and setup a new personal best.
Week #4, here I come!
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