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.

Cardio-Strength Program: week #10

Week #10 out of 15


This week I was introduced to a new workout: Zeus. And just to make sure that we get to know each other properly, My Coach asked me to do it three times. We'll get to a review of this workout later, but to summarize it's completely strength oriented. With Artemis as my last session, this week was all about muscle building.


There an aspect of the training that I have not discussed so far: "instructions".
When you purchase the program and log on the Freeletics website you can see what sessions have been assigned to you for the week and there is a short paragraph titled "instructions". Each time you click on the "next week" button, you get your sessions for the following weeks and the instructions change as well.

In the first weeks, the instructions are mostly motivational and basic health advises. I don't have the exact quotes, but it's stuff like "Training will be harder than anything you've experience before. Take as long as you need but always try to complete each workout". Sometimes instructions include a special challenge for the week. To be honest, these challenges were so far from my training experience, that up to know I didn't think that they were worth mentioning. May be because of the 5 weeks of pre-training, I was a bit ahead of the game (compared to someone who starts Freeletics on week 1), but they seemed to easy.
For example, a challenge may say: "This week try to complete 2 workouts in their star version". I haven't compiled detailed stats of my results, but my guess is that 80%-90% of my completed workouts have stars. So there was no real "challenge".

So why this long discussion all of a sudden about instructions?

This week, I actually got a challenge that I wasn't 100% sure to complete: "This week’s workouts are well suited to train your capacity to withstand fatigue. Therefore, the goal of the week is to break your PB in two different workouts.".
With 3 Zeus sessions, it was sure that I'd get at least 1 PB (when starting a new workout time improves simply from getting used to the routine and not always looking for what should be done next). However, if I didn't score a good time on my Artemis session, the challenge couldn't be achieved.

So finally I paid more attention to these instructions, and I realized that even the early challenges that I had disregarded so far could be worthwhile for beginners. If you have been out of shape for a few years and follow the program, being asked to get a star, may give you that extra motivation to from "easy" burpees to "normal" burpees.


Monday: ZEUS (25:46)

Tuesday: ZEUS (25:21 -personal best)

Wednesday: ZEUS (24:31 -personal best)

So here is what Zeus looks like:

• 5 HS pushups
• 15 pullups
• 25 pushups
• 35 situps
• 45 squats
• 120 seconds rest
• 4 rounds (no rest at the end of the 4th round, the training is over after the run)

Now I'm gonna say something very paradoxical coming from someone who hasn't got a single star in 3 attempts: it's actually a nice training. I didn't even sweat (which is exceptional enough with Freeletics to be mentioned!).

I don't get the star because of the Hand-stand pushups. Let's face it, I *really* suck at it. I'm so annoyed at wasting time on the normal version, that I prefer doing the easy version to at keep the cardio intensity high. At some point I'll have to take time aside from regular training to learn how to do this exercise properly...
Aside from HS pushups, there is no major difficulty. Of course if you are assigned this training in your first weeks, pullups will be an issue but you'll get over it rapidly.

Here what makes me say that it's a no sweat workout:

• Pure strength exercises only have a few reps (5 to 25 max)
• The routine starts by focusing on arms, but after that the rest of the round is a complete recovery time for your arm muscles.
• There is not a single cardio exercise that will drive you out of breath. The only exercise that made my heart race a bit was when doing squats quickly...
• 120 seconds rest! Three times! Seriously people, how often have you seen Freeletics workouts that allow you to go check your emails during training? Even if your cardio is a bit high after squats, it will be long gone by the time you start the next round.

Not surprisingly after my first attempt, I score 2 personal best as I was learning how to perform the routine more efficiently. I was surprised at how easy the squats seemed to me. I usually hate them, but I didn't have any difficulty in any of the three sessions. I guess that it's partly due to the fact that no other exercise in the routine strains the legs.
I also hope that it means that the heavy leg work that I completed in the past weeks is starting to pay off and that my tights muscles are getting stronger.


Thursday: Boxing training

Sunday: ARTEMIS (26:31* -personal best)

History repeated itself all however again. My kids came back from school sick, and after managing a few days to dodge viruses and germs, I finally got sick as well. The last session had to be postpone to Sunday. There will be no break between Week #10 and #11.

I still wasn't in my best shape, but I was lucky to have only a strength workout to complete. I'm not sure that I would have attempted it if it had been an outdoor cardio workout.
From my personal experience, I think that Cardio is the worse when not feeling well. No matter what condition(s) you have.  It's not recommended to get hot & sweat when feverish; you can't breath properly with a running nose or sore throat; and you don't want to be jumping/running all over the place with stomach ache or when nauseous.

Anyway, in the end I decreased my personal best by about 3 minutes. This may seems like a big improvement but keep in mind that my last Artemis was 8 weeks ago. Given all the pushups & pullups that I have completed over this period, it's normal that my body is now better prepared to handle the long repetitions (50 pullups and 100 pushups).


That's all folks. Let's hope that week #11 will be virus free!