Post-program (self-scheduled training): week #27-33

Here is an update on my training schedule.

Week 27:

• Tuesday: Hades (17:21*)
• Wednesday: Atlas (22:39* -PB)
• Thursday: boxing training
• Friday: Ares (07:57*) + Poseidon (04:25* -PB) + Metis (05:02* -PB) + Squat Max (196* -PB) + Pushup MAX (46*) + Situp MAX (124*)
• Saturday: Custom-made workout (14:02). I tested for a reader the following routine: 3 rounds of: 10 Burpees + 30 Squats + 45sec Plank + 2x5 (L+R) Spiderman Push Ups + 30 Mountain Climbers + 60sec Superman (note: I did Sipderman & Climbers assuming both sides = 1 rep)

Week 28:

• Tuesday: Kronos (38:50* -PB First attempt)
• Wednesday: Iris (30:30* -PB)
• Thursday: boxing training
• Friday: Hades (16:54*)
• Sunday: Ares (07:46*) + Lunge MAX (178* -PB) + Ares (07:53*) + Lunge MAX (191* -PB) + Pushup MAX (49*)

Week 29:

• Monday: Artemis (23:11* -PB)
• Tuesday: Dione (26:24*)
• Wednesday: Metis (04:36* -PB) + Hyperion (17:58 -PB)
• Thursday: boxing training
• Friday: boxing training + Poseidon (04:37*) + Leg Lever MAX (165*)

Week 30:

• Thursday: Aphrodite (18:59* -PB) + Pullup MAX (32*) + Pushup MAX (37*)
• Friday: Venus (21:52*)

Week 31:

• Monday: Hades (16:37*) + Poseidon (05:11*)
• Tuesday: Apollon (22:23*) + Pushup MAX (35*) + Pushup MAX (20* -holding 3s in locked arms positions) + Pushup MAX (12* -right arm only) + Pushup MAX (14* -left arm only)
• Wednesday: Zeus (21:25 -PB)
• Thursday: boxing training
• Saturday: Dione (23:17*)
• Sunday: Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) Test to see how my body reacted to 100 PU broken into in 4 sets of 25 consecutive repetitions.

Week 32 (launch of the Pushup challenge):

• Monday:
• Morning: Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*)
• Evening: Ares (07:56*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Ares (07:52*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*)
• Tuesday:
• Morning: Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*)
• Evening: Aphrodite (19:07*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*)
• Wednesday:
• Morning: Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*)
• Lunch: Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Hera (21:40*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*)
• Thursday:
• Morning: Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*)
• Evening: boxing training (included at least 100 PU)
• Friday:
• Morning: Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*)
• Evening: Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*)
• Saturday:
• Morning: Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*)
• Evening: Artemis (21:46* -PB -includes 100 PU)
• Sunday:
• Morning: Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*)
• Evening: Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*)

Week 33 (last week of the Pushup challenge):

• Monday:
• Morning: Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*)
• Evening: Venus (20:29* -includes 200 PU)
• Tuesday:
• Morning: Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*)
• Evening: Kronos (38:06* -PB includes 100 PU)
• Wednesday:
• Morning: Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*)
• Lunch: Iris (29:03* -PB) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*) + Pushup MAX (25*)
• Friday: running (3.32km in 16:58) + Pushup MAX (60*)

I have previously discussed the Pushup challenge, so I won't cover it further in this post. However another highlight of these past weeks is that I tried a new workout: Kronos.
If you have never met this workout before, you will learn very quickly to respect it! It only has 1 round, but what a Hell of a round:

• 100 Pushups
• 200 Situps
• 300 Squats
• 200 Leg Levers
• 100 Pullups

If you are new to Freeletics, unless you already have an excellent physical conditions pretty much each of these sets will be a challenge. You will need to break each of them into smaller bits (e.g. 10 sets of 10 pushups with short breaks in-between). So expect a very long completion time (over an hour).
In my case, "My Coach" never assigned this workout to me. For my first attempt, I was fortunate to already have 8 months of training (week#28) behind me. From the start, I knew that I would not be able to perform 100 consecutive pushups. Based on my past experience with Artemis, I did short sets (~20) to avoid killing my arms from the start but paying attention not to take too long breaks (~10-20 seconds). The effort was more manageable while avoiding losing too much time. The next 3 exercises were fine. Leg Levers have always been one of my strengths. 200 reps is nearly what I do in 5mn for the MAX, however it took me a bit more time. The effort is more difficult for abs after the 200 situps.
The real difficulty were the 100 pullups. The high number of repetitions makes this set very hard to complete, especially since the previous pushups have already taken a toll on shoulders. I spent nearly 10mn just on this exercise. On my second attempt (week #33), my PB had already improved by ~45s mostly due to better execution on pushups (thanks to the pushups challenge), but I had little gains on pullups side. Improving pure strength to reduce pushups & pullups completion time will be the key to drop further my personal best.



While it requires some time for me to sit down and write these long posts with all my results, it proves to be very useful. Often, I just do one workout after another, without giving too much thoughts about it. Writing these posts forces me to analyze my schedule and see if I stick to my good resolutions.
So let's see how I performed versus what I had planned last time:

• Training frequency: Over 7 weeks I performed 30 sessions for a total training time of ~661 minutes. That's 4 sessions per week on average, each lasting approximately 22 minutes. The increased training load of the Pushup challenge has offset the lack of training during my short vacations in week #30. Conclusion: average number of session/week increased as intended.

• Training content: while my first month without "My Coach" was a bit disorganized, I am getting closer to finding the right training balance. It's now part of my weekly routine to perform 1 outdoor training over my lunch break. This kills several birds with one stone: I regularly practice running, it frees-up one of my evenings, and by doing it on Wednesday I'm in much better shape from my Thursday boxing training (my body gets 36 hours of rest + running workouts don't strain much arms or shoulders). Additionally, I'm more careful to include some Cardio in my schedule as I had leaned a bit too much on the Strength side. 

• Getting out of my comfort zone: One of my fear was that I would follow the path of least resistance and end-up only doing the workouts that I liked. So far I have managed to be disciplined enough to include my routines workouts that I had not performed in months or the ones that I never tried. It's not perfect yet (for the moment I have managed to dodge doing Kentauros!), but workout diversity is definitely a criterion that I take into account when doing my schedule. Since training on my own, I have not organized any Hell Week, but I enjoyed the Pushup Challenge and I might use similar highly-focused training from time to time to push my limits.

As usual, another post will follow shortly to give an update on my body stats.

Overestimating How Hard We Exercise

I'm more used to write content instead of simply pasting links, but I just stumbled on an article published today in the blog section of the New York Times: "Overestimating How Hard We Exercise", by Gretchen Reynolds.
Some of you could find it an interesting read (follow the link to the article).

This relates to some reflections I have been having about the Freeletics method.

Having a fixed workout content and only completion time as a variable, is a great way to ensure high intensity.
Each time that I have a meeting with Aphrodite or one of the gods, I try to setup a new PB. I don't always succeed and sometimes it's mission impossible (bad day, sickness, doing several workouts in a row, etc.). But missing the PB is not that important. What matters most is how far I am from my peak performance.
If I finish in 20:00 instead of 19:00, I still got a good sweat in the process. But if I finish near 30:00, no matter how good my explanation, the clock doesn't lie: I am back to were I was 8 months ago. Hard to pretend that I was at maximum intensity...

Star rating (how to put a star) and how to correct an incorrect result submission

In my previous post explaining when to attribute a Star to a workout, I had assumed that readers knew what I meant by "getting a star". But it turns out that it's not so clear to everybody how to record it. So this short post will try to explain how the software works.

With Freeletics, your training results are self-reported. At the end of the workout either you stop the timer yourself, or for MAX workouts you input the number of repetitions. That's also when you indicate if the workout was completed in the most difficult version.

• If you use the Freeletics website to record results:

just select "yes" or "no" on the same screen where you submitting your training results.

 

• If you use the app to record results:

just before submitting your result you can write a comment (for your network friends to see), but also that's on this screen that you can record the star (or not).
As an illustration look at the 2 screenshots below. Left is the "no star" version (= modified pushups), right the "star" version (=all pushups done regularly).

 

•  If you record results on paper/computer:

 simply write down your results like I do on the blog "21" or "21*".

• If you want to correct a submitted workout (add/remove a star):

 On the app, recent updates have made correcting wrong submission less visible.. You need to know where to look, but it's possible to add/remove a star.

First go on the screen where all your recent results are listed. For the sake of the example let's assume that I want to correct my latest Pushup MAX to remove the star. I just click on the workout.

On the next screen with the graph with my recent results in Pushup Max, again I click on the workout that I want to correct.

 

Click on EDIT (top-left corner)

 

Then simply Tab/Untab the Star and save the correction.

 

On the website, it's even easier. Simply go under the "recent" section, click on the workout that you want to correct. In the top-right corner, click on "EDIT". Re-submit the workout. Note that on the website you can correct not only the star, but as well the time/repetitions and date when the workout was done.

That's all the IT support that you'll get today! ;-)

Breaking the push-up max ceiling

I have been training for over half a year now, and step by step my performance has been improving. Cumulated small gains, ended-up being big gains.
To illustrate my point, let's compare my current Personal Bests for a few workouts versus my first attempts (Oct/Nov 2013). In bracket I'm showing Alexander Villena's PB as benchmarks of top performance (I still have lots of work to do):

• Aphrodite: 30:49* → 18:59* (AV PB = 13:27*)
• Dione: 37:03* → 23:17* (AV PB = 19:51)
• Hades: 25:17 (no star) → 16:04* (AV PB = 13:43*)
• Pull-up MAX: 14* → 34* (AV PB = 59*)

Not surprisingly, enhanced physical activity has been leading to better results across the board. However, lately I have been growing disappointed with my (lack of) progress in push-ups. It that one specific exercise I felt like I had plateaued.
 
Below is a chart showing all my Push-ups max results since the beginning (PB are highlighted in blue).

While following the program, my PB went from 42 to 53. An improvement, but nothing spectacular. At first I didn't worry about it, thinking that I would probably get better results after completing my Cardio-Strength program simply by increasing the ratio of Strength-oriented workouts to my routine. In March-April I started making my own schedule, so I included a lot of Venus, Hades and Pushup MAX.

But nothing happened.

I once equaled my PB, but most of the time I was far below. Of course, often I had been performing the Pushup MAX toward the end of a session, when my arm muscles were already tired. So poor performance on any single day didn't mean much. But looking at the trend, it confirmed what my guts had been telling me: my performance stalled around 50.

By mid-May I was convinced that to progress further I needed a special training for push-ups. So I started looking for a method. The good news is that the Internet is full of advises on how to improve push-ups. The bad news is that there is no consensus: everyone makes different recommendations. Also, a lot of the suggested methods did not really fit with my schedule or my regular training. Many programs had very heavy training days followed by 48 hours of rest. I wanted to focus on push-ups, but not do only push-ups.

I wanted something that I could do in complement to my other Freeletics workouts. In the end, I took some ideas from 3 coaches' opinions on the matter and mixed them with a former Navy seal's 10 days program to come-up with a custom training plan. Using 50 reps as my baseline max, I setup the following rules:

• 10 consecutive of days push-ups training, followed by 48 hours of rest
• Total push-ups per day: 4 times my max (=200 push-ups per day).
• 25 repetitions per set (half my max).
• First 100 reps before breakfast, the last 100 in the evening with my regular training.
• I didn't want to risk injury from over-training, so if my evening workout already included push-ups, that would count toward my daily goal of 200.

Each set of 25 would be performed consecutively (no break) and recorded in the Freeletics app as a Push-up MAX. The idea was to keep track of my count, but also to force me to take breaks. Because a MAX lasts 1:40 and I only need half this time to do 25 push-ups, hence I would get ~1 minute of rest between each set.

I was wondering if that regimen would be too hard on my muscles. But 25 repetitions turned out to be a good number. It was exactly the number of reps that I could perform before getting into the grinding zone. The first few days my arms would be tired rapidly. In the first 2 sets I would do all the repetitions in 40-45 seconds. The 4th set was harder, my paced dropped to 55-60 seconds. After a 5-6 days my speed improved (35-40 seconds) and was constant during all 4 sets.

After a few days when I saw that my arms handled the effort well, for added difficulty, from time to time one of my kid would lay on my back while I performed the push-ups. The extra weight was respectively 15kg (33 lbs) or 11kg (24 lbs). It's cheaper than buying a weighted vest, but the downside is that for them it's like a merry-go-round ride. Once they try it, they want to get a ride every time...
 
After the 10 days of training and the 48 hours of rest, I took a new Push-up Max  to measure improvements. I ended-up doing 60 repetitions, largely breaking my 3 months-old PB. 


However, when completing this test, my shoulders still felt a bit stiff. I wasn't sure if I was in peak condition. I decided to do a second test after an additional 2 days of rest. Tonight I started my training with a Pushup MAX and completed 60 reps again. A few workouts later, I completed a second Pushup MAX ending at 55 reps.

The last 3 attempts have clearly been a notch above historical performance. So the special focus definitely paid-off. I will probably re-do a similar program in the future to keep driving improvements (may be pull-ups?). But this will remain occasional, in order to give my body enough rest.

Unexpectedly, I really enjoyed the quick push-ups session prior to breakfast. I'm thinking to do this more regularly. Total reps (100?), format (4 sets? 3 sets) and periodicity (daily? every 2 days?) are still to be determined. I will see in the next few weeks what routine feels the most natural.