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.
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.
I had not reported on my training since completing the program. It's only now that I'm writing this post that I realize that 6 weeks have already passed. Time flies. While I kept training every single week, overall the past weeks felt much more relaxed. Partly because there were more relaxed (less workouts), but also because peace of mind came from adjusting my training around my schedule. My training was the following:
Week 21:
Tuesday:Aphrodite (19:43* -PB) + Leg Levers Max (196* -PB) + Ares (08:16*)
Thursday: boxing training
Friday:Venus (21:24*) + Leg Levers Max (192*)
Week 22:
Monday: boxing training
Tuesday: Hades (16:04* -PB) + Sit up Max (133*)
Wednesday: Venus (20:58* -PB)
Thursday: boxing training
Saturday: Venus (19:23* -PB) + Leg Levers Max (187*)
Week 23:
Monday:Venus (20:14*) + Pullup Max (32*) + Pushup Max (41*)
Tuesday: Pullup Max (34* -PB) + Pushup Max (47*) +Leg Levers Max (186*) + Lunge Max (173* -PB) + Aphrodite (20:09*)
Thursday: boxing training
Saturday: Venus (21:05*) + Pullup Max (28*)
Sunday:Pushup Max (49*) + Pullup Max (29*) + Pushup Max (41*)
Week 24:
Monday:Venus (21:13*) + Leg Levers Max (188*) + Pullup Max(30*)
Tuesday: Venus (21:38*)
Thursday: boxing training
Saturday:Aphrodite (20:00*) + Pushup Max (42*) + Leg Levers Max (183*) + Pushup Max (53*) + Pullup Max(31*)
Sunday:Pullup Max(30*)
Week 25:
Tuesday: Hades (17:42*) + Situp Max (145*)
Wednesday:Aphrodite (19:38*)
Thursday: boxing training
Week 26:
Monday: Venus (24:24*)
Tuesday: Hades (17:35*)
Thursday: boxing training
Friday:Venus (19:38*)
If I exclude, the Sunday were I just did a single MAX session for fun, over 6 weeks I performed 17 sessions for a total training time for ~339 minutes. That's 3 sessions per week on average, each of approximately 20 minutes. True, the average is slightly lowered by Week #21, which was very light on purpose to recover from the preceding Hell Week. But figures don't lie. As outlined in a previous post, I intended to reduce the number of session and focus on strength workouts (which tend to be shorter than cardio). Free training is new to me, so I'm still experimenting and trying to find the best balance between personal life & training. I will do a separate post for body stats after these 6 weeks, but there are already a few take-away:
Adjusting training on the spot to fit unexpected schedule changes is great. That's the kind of flexibility I was looking for before starting Freeletics...
...but, I will probably need to fix myself a few strict guidelines. An absolute minimum number of 3 sessions per week is probably a good rule to put in place. As you can see on week 25, one schedule constraint after another led to only 2 sessions being done. It's not dramatic once, but it should not become a habit. Another rule that I'm contemplating is to do each workout at least once every 3 months. Just to avoid becoming too comfy by never doing the messy workouts that require you to crawl in the dirt (like Kentauros).
Performance gains in Strength workouts have been slower than anticipated. As you can see, I have scored very few personal best lately. With the amount of push-ups that I have performed, I would have though that each new Venus would be easier than the previous one. But it wasn't so. I will need to be more patient to see progress, but also add a bit more Cardio sessions in my training mix (more time for muscles to recover and to keep good stamina).
Week #13 out of 15 Welcome to "Max Week". I usually find that doing several MAX in a row tends to be easier than 1 long workout, but I have to confess that it's a bit unsettling to look at your weekly schedule to see 14 workouts. For a split second, I was wondering what happened. Upon closer examination, it turned out that the training load was comparable to a regular week. Only session 3 looked challenging on paper: 6 MAX in total, with the added difficulty that instead of 6 different workouts it's made of 3 workouts each to be repeated twice.
Monday: HS PUSHUP MAX (67 -personal best) +PUSHUP MAX (48*) +JUMP MAX (220* -personal best)
The week started with HS Pushup MAX. And I am now able to confirm that I *really* suck at handstand pushups. I expected to do the MAX in the easy form, but just to see if I had made any progress I decided to first try the normal version. This MAX only lasts 100 seconds, yet after 60s I still had not managed to get into the handstand position against the wall... But I still wanted to know if I was able to do a HS pushup. So after the first failed attempt, I tried again but this time I had recruited my wife to help me get into the right position. It took a while, but eventually I ended-up in the right position. In the little time that was left I managed to complete ~1.5 repetition. I still have a bit of training before I can pretend competing in the Olympic Games' gymnastics competition... Of course, I didn't record this "performance" (I had to use external help), this was just a test. I like to understand what are the barriers preventing me from completing certain exercises. HS pushups have been puzzling me for a while. Back in junior school, I wasn't too bad at hand stands. Of course it's a long time ago, but I had expected that after a few trials it would come back. For the past few weeks I had assumed that the main reason for failure was because I wasn't throwing my legs at full strength by fear of damaging the wall (remember I trained inside my house). However, during the last test my wife was there to catch my legs. She could have prevented any damage to the wall. Yet, that didn't solve the problem. So my guess is that it's linked to some kind of unconscious barrier. To succeed in this exercise, I have to train my brain that it's ok to be upside down. From time to time I'll try to do specific HS training aside from the regular Freeletics exercises. No clock. No pushups. Just me in front of a concrete wall getting used to get these feet up. I'll let you guys know if that works. After the 2 failed attempts, I still had all my training remaining to be done. So I reverted back to easy HS puhups, to complete the first workout. No star of course, but at least a PB. Followed by a Pushup MAX. Star, no PB. My last workout was Jump MAX. I only completed it once in the past. It was in the middle of a Hell Day so not surprisingly I didn't deliver a peak performance (approx. 180 reps). This time I wanted to score more than 200 reps. I did 50 reps before taking a short break to catch my breath. Then 40 reps. Then rounds of 20, reaching a total of 220 reps. A pretty good performance and a new PB. Breathing will be the key to get more reps.
Tuesday: HADES (20:32*)
I had sore calves from the Monday jumps and my motivation wasn't at its top. I haven't re-read all my previous posts, but I have the feeling that on Tuesdays I'm often less in the mood for training. I'll keep an eye open to see if that's really a pattern. Anyway, as often when the mind isn't inspired, the performance isn't great: Hades over 20mn.
Wednesday:SPLIT LUNGE MAX (166* -personal best) +SITUP MAX (129* -personal best) +JACKNIFE MAX (37*) +SPLIT LUNGE MAX (149*) +SITUP MAX (131* -personal best) +JACKNIFE MAX (31*)
The training started well with 2 PB in a row, the first real difficulty appeared with the Jacknives (much harder than usual due to the previous situps).
What can be worse than a Split Max? Two Split Max of course! Repeating these workouts twice was my main concern today, but surprisingly it wasn't as bad as I expected. No PB on the second Lunge MAX, but I wasn't very far from the first attempt. I even managed to get a second PB in Situp MAX! I didn't have to wait long to pay the price for this effort. My abs were burning during the last Jacknives. Overall I was pleased by the results, but this was a fairly demanding day due to the heavy load spread over very few muscles.
Thursday: Boxing training Training as usual. Just want to confirm that sore butt is definitely a consequence from Lunges...
Friday: nothing
I intended to do the session 4 on Friday, however I woke-up with a pain just above left ankle, on the outer side of the leg. Probably the tendon, rather than muscles. Curiously this is not a spot where I'm used to have tendinitis. Usually after too much running or rope jumping I get tendinitis on the inner side of the leg (also just above the ankle). Because of this new location, I assume that it must be caused by an exercise that I'm not used to do. My guess is that the Jumps on Monday did the bulk of the damage, but that I didn't feel it yet. The Thursday training probably finished the job (the boxing stance and movements rely heavily on the ball of the foot, just like when landing those jumps), leading to the inflammation of the tendon. The pain didn't fade during the day, so I decided no to train to give a full day of rest to my leg. Saturday:
Session 4: DIONE (25:43* -personal best)
Session 5: HS PUSHUP MAX (58) +PUSHUP MAX (53* - personal best) +JUMP MAX (217*)
I could still feel a pain. It didn't seem bad enough to lead to a more serious injury, so I decided that I could finish my training. To support the foot and avoid torning my foot, I wore an ankle brace. I didn't notice any discomfort during the first workout. It went very well, I finished well under 26:00 improving again my Dione PB and finally beating that time from Mads that I had used as a training goal for weeks. This really felt like a big achievement (I now have to find myself a new target to keep going!).
I followed-up by completing the fifth & last session of the week. I didn't even try to do normal HS pushups this time, and went straight to the easy version. No PB. For pushups, that was painful but I did manage to improve my personal best, finishing with 53 repetitions. Last but not least Jumps MAX. The exercise went relatively well, breathing was a bit better than Monday so I think that under normal conditions I could have gone a bit above 220. But at the very end of the workout, I felt that the repeated landings were worsening my leg condition. So I stopped before the end of the timer. That's all for the week. From a training stands point it was very good, with an unusual training routine, many PBs, and a milestone achieved in Dione. The only downer is this stupid tendinitis. I hope that it will not jeopardize week #14 training. The good news as I look at the week #14 training is that it's mostly strength focused, so I won't have to complete jumps or run 1 km.
Week #9 out of 15 Last time I suggested that my next post would be an update on the evolution of my body stats. Then I realized that I was already in the middle of week #9. To be consistent with my previous measures, I decided to delay the measures until the week-end. A few days might not make a big difference, but I prefer taking snapshots at clearly identifiable milestones (like "after week #9") than fuzzy ones (like "after 8 and a half weeks"). So first I'm giving an update on my week #9 training, and then the body stats post will follow shortly (measures are already taken, I just need to sit and write them down).
Tuesday: ARES (08:06*) + LUNGE MAX (134*) + POSEIDON (05:55*) + SQUAT MAX (173*) My training week started Tuesday (impossible to schedule earlier). No easy ramp-up for me this week: my first session was made of 4 workouts, including a new one.
First came Ares, a workout that I consider as relatively easy. As you can see I didn't get a new personal best. This shows that even when a workout is not particularly challenging, you need to be at your max intensity to get these damned PBs. Taking it easy is not an option! Then came Split Lunge Max. If anyone wants to create the "Lunge Max Haters Club", I will sign-up immediately. This exercise is basically a static version of the Lunge Walk. The strange thing is that I actually don't mind the Lunge Walk. I even wrote that, to me, it felt easier than Squats. After thinking about it, I think that I understand why Split Lunge is harder than Lunge Walk. When you walk, while your left leg moves forward, your weight is 100% on the right leg. Once the left foot connects with the ground, your body weight progressively shifts from the right leg to the left one. It's the same thing when you do a Lunge Walk: progressive weight shift. To do a Split Lunge, during a split second both feet are off the ground (see video below). Which means that their is no progressive shift, one leg has to absorb 100% of the body weight at once when you re-connect with the ground. Hence the effort is bigger.
Then I completed a Poseidon workout. No PB either. Generally I expect to have a slightly sub-par performance if I have already completed a few workouts beforehand. In this specific case I was disappointed. The last time that I did Poseidon was on week #2. 7 weeks later it took me 5 additional seconds to complete. This clearly wasn't my best day ever. I wrapped-up the day with a Squat Max. No need to say I didn't get a PB. On a regular day this exercise is already a weak spot for me, but doing it after the Split Lunge Max was even more difficult. The positive point is that to stay focused I had set as a personal objective to do at least 170 repetitions. Mission accomplished. This last workout was my 100th Freeletics workout since starting the program! I took a lot of sweat to get there! Wednesday: DIONE (29:16* -personal best) Before moving to my daily training, let me share a personal anecdote. As you know I practice boxing, which is a sport that makes the entire body work. Over the year I have gotten sore muscles pretty much all over the place (even jaws muscles!). Sometimes it hurt in places where I didn't thought that I had muscles. But I never had a sore butt like the one I got on Wednesday! Ladies & Gentlemen, I may hate this workout, but I tell you: if you are looking to get an ass of steel before the Summer, Split Lunge is the exercise that you should be doing! Only Dione was on the menu today. I'm very familiar with this workout by now, and my last PB was a 9 weeks old. So I expected a massive improvement, around 5 minutes or more. In the end, if I did get a new PB, the time "only" improved by 02:11. Was my expectation unrealistic? Was my performance sub-optimal? I don't know. Next time that I have to complete Dione, if my results improve dramatically (or not), I'll get the answer.
Thursday: Boxing training
Friday: KENTAUROS (30:59*) When starting this program I have decided to spread the training load over the work-week, and use the week-end to get 2 consecutive rest days. Over the past few weeks scheduling constraints have extended my training to include Saturday as well. To get back to my original setup, if possible I wanted to do my last 2 sessions on Friday. I can't do pull-ups where I train near work, so I decided that I'd train Kentauros during my lunch break and do the last session in the evening.
Kentauros is a workout that is physically demanding, but fairly balanced. To put it in other words: I respect this training, but that I don't really fear it. My confidence & motivation levels were good when I started training. The workout began with the Lunge Walk, which was completed normally. But when came the time to do the first High Jumps, at first I couldn't do them. My legs didn't provide enough force to lift me off the ground high enough. The strange thing was my legs did not feel sore at all. I had no pain. Simply the muscles did not respond as expected. Eventually, I got the 10 jumps completed. This shook my confidence at bit but I kept going. Then came the Burpee Frogs . Doing the burpee part was ok, but I couldn't jump forward as far as I usually did. The ironic thing when training over a fixed distance, is that because my difficulties to jump, I was forced to complete more repetitions. The icing on the cake was that the ground was soaking wet, so my gloves & tracksuit were quickly dripping with water. Afterward doing the high jumps felt normal again, but the burpee frogs remained very difficult. As you can imagine I didn't get a personal best. I actually scored a "personal worst": 49 seconds more than when I first attempted Kentauros in week #7.
While analyzing what happened, I came to the conclusion that my tights had not recovered from the Split Lunge and the Squats on Tuesday. The leg muscles were still strained from the effort, but I had not realized it because they did not feel sore. Those of you who follow me on the app saw that, I was a bit gloomy after the training and hoped to have better performance in the evening. Ultimately, it didn't train further. It was a bad day and I came home late, so I took a rest in the evening.
Saturday: ARES (08:07*) + LUNGE MAX (143* -personal best) + POSEIDON (05:13* -personal best) + SQUAT MAX (171*) A new day and a new start. I wanted to score as many personal best as possible to wash off the bad Friday. Session 4 was exactly the same as Session 1. I felt great while doing Ares. I thought that I was flying. If anything was flying around it must have been my mind, not my body. Because my completion time was not stellar. 1 second more than on Tuesday, that's an average performance. Next came Lunge Max. I didn't want this exercise to because a phobia, so despite tired legs I gave it all to improve the number of repetitions. It worked, I got a PB. For Poseidon I knew that I must be possible to improve. I stayed focused and managed to get a PB, improving by over 30 seconds. For the Squat Max, just like in Session 1, I knew that the PB was out of reach but I didn't want to let my myself slack-off. So, again I set myself the objective to do over 170 reps. I barely made-it with 171 reps, but I was satisfied.
I was pleased with my last session. It's not my best day ever, I got 2 PB and it cheered me up after the Kentauros failure. It's always nice to finish the week on a positive note!
