Cardio-Strength Program: week #6

Week #6 out of 15


Kids do all kind of unexpected things. But one thing that you can be sure of, is that they'll always share their germs & viruses with you. My kids are no exception. So this week I was sick in bed Wednesday & Thursday. That wasn't fun, but the good news is that it didn't really impact my training schedule.
I was assigned 5 sessions this week. Thankfully, I had loaded Monday & Tuesday with 3 sessions, to get as much training out of the way before Christmas day. Once recovered from illness, I had only 2 sessions left to complete week #6.


Monday:

• Session 1: HADES (19:35* -personal best)
• Session 2: SITUPS MAX (87*) +SITUPS MAX (93*)

The week started very well with a nice personal best in Hades. Just like my last attempt in week #5, I started the workout at a high pace. But this time I managed to keep a good rhythm during the third round. My overall completion time decreased by 2 minutes.

The big surprise came from the situps. After the Hades PB, I was fired-up and ready to blow away my situps record. That never happened. After only 40 situps I could feel pain in my abs muscles, as if I had done 150 or 200 repetitions. I completed the workout with difficulties, but decided to follow-up immediately with the second Situps Max.
During the second workout pain my abs were still sore, but was gone. I completed more repetitions than in the first attempt, but didn't improve my personal best (102).

At first I couldn't understand how I got sore abs, when my last abs focused exercise was more than 10 days ago. Then I realized where it came from: pullups!

My pullup bar is installed within a door frame. I can't pull myself perfectly vertically without banging my head against the frame. So my upward movement is slightly diagonal. To keep my body completely straight, all my core muscles are contracted.
Until today, I had not realized how straining this exercise was for my abs muscles.


Tuesday: BURPEES MAX (68* -personal best) + ARES (07:44* -personal best)

Not much to say today. The PB in Burpees Max was expected, this time I started with fresh arms while last attempt was done after another workout.

With about 2 weeks since the last Ares training, I also expected new PB. A 1 minute improvement on such a short workout was pleasing.


Friday: HADES (22:38*)

Yesterday I had toyed with the idea of doing session #4 on despite still being not well. I'm glad that I ruled out this unwise option. My body was still tired from the illness.Training today was more difficult than usual. I did my best to keep a high intensity but honestly scoring a PB was not going to happen.


Saturday: APOLLON (23:49* -personal best)

The week-end is dedicated to a family gathering. The only time available to do my last session was early morning before breakfast. If you don't like burpees, wait until you try burpees on frosted ground... :-)

Physically, I wasn't in top shape, but clearly felt better than yesterday. The training was alright. I scored a new personal best, improving the Apollon completion time by about 2:30.


It has been another challenging week. I'm glad that I'm done with it. Usually, as soon as I have completed my weekly program, I move on to the next week so that I can start scheduling my workouts. This time, I have decided to take a complete rest during the next few days. I will only discover the week #7 program on Monday night.