Staying consistent, but stuck in a rut

Yesterday’s workout was horrible. Took ages and just felt unsatisfying. Mainly down to this:

5 sets of…
2x 10m Bear Walk
24 Sprawls
2x 20m Crab Walk
12x left and right hip raises

All of that puts a fair bit of pressure on the wrists, and just feels a little ungainly. And then I also had to do 16x pistol squats, 50x Climbers and 20x Burpee Squat Jumps. Gross.

I’ve only been doing Freeletics twice a week for the past few weeks. I always seem to skip Fridays. But I have been running at least twice a week so I’m still exercising four out of seven days. But I think Coach might be loading a lot onto those two days. Now the days are getting brighter and the weather a bit better maybe I need to push myself to train on Fridays too. But probably in the morning rather than the evening as it just never seems to happen at the end of a working week.

I also set myself a goal at the beginning of the year to lose a bit of weight. I’m not really seeing that happen yet. A mix of lockdown (less moving about, maybe eating and drinking a little too much) and not feeling like I’m particularly pushing myself when I run or do Freeletics. It all feels a bit sluggish.

But I am pleased that I’ve been consistent. Usually at this time of year there are a couple of weeks where I don’t exercise at all, but I’ve been making sure I stick to it even if I don’t want to.

Also I noticed that since I’ve stopped practicing pull-ups I’ve pretty much lost all the ability to do them. Need to get back on that.

I am enjoying Freeletics’ new features though. Good to be using foam rollers for example as part of warm-ups and cool-downs. It feels like they’re really investing into the app. And that keeps it interesting.

First go at the HS Pushup

Well, I kind of kept up the good work. I trained four times this week, which has been unheard of recently. And I did three days with no alcohol whatsoever and two with only a glass or two of wine. And when I did drink, I didn’t drink beer (liquid bread as someone called it recently). However, on Wednesday I had a work party where there was loads of free wine. One of those events where someone is always filling up your glass so you’re never quite sure how much you’ve had to drink. I pretty much had the recommended units of alcohol in one evening. Oops.

Training this week went like this:

Sunday

I blogged about this at the time. I did Ares in the park with an inquisitive child looking on. Did it in 10:23 and replaced actual pullups with jumping pullups.

Monday

Drill
8x Hanging Knee Raises
1x HS Pushups

Interval – 4 rounds of:
8x Incline Rows
8x Negative Pushups
8x Squat Jumps
60s Rest

1/4 Venus

50 High Knees

Most of that was absolutely fine.  But the HS Pushup? There was just absolutely no way that I could do that. I got up against the wall okay, but actually being able to lift my head off the floor was impossible. My arms just aren’t strong enough. Definitely one to work on.

Wednesday

Drill
15x Burpee Squat Jumps
10x Strict Pullups

Interval – 4 rounds of:
5s Pullup Hold
10x Situps
5x Plank Switches
60s Rest

1/2 Amazona

I took my time on the pullups and made sure I did them properly.

Amazona is one of the new workouts. I quite enjoyed it. Definitely works out your legs (it’s all lunges and squat jumps and plank leg lifts). It was over quite quickly (05:32) and I definitely felt like I’d had to work hard enough

Friday

2x Hebe

Half way through this I had a short break and came out of the app momentarily to look at Twitter (!). My phone took this moment to update the Freeletics app, so I lost the workout and had to start again. So I had a 7minute break in the middle of 2x Hebe. To be honest this was very welcome. It’s a tough workout I think, even though Freeletics marks it as easy and quick. This worked out my legs more than Amazona. Squat jumps, Squats, Sprawls and pushups. I was very sweaty at the end.

Next week brings my first Adonis and my first Kerberos. Bring it on.

 

Kentauros, the workout that nearly broke me

There’s something about having had to give up on the pull-ups the other day that made the thought of stopping Kentauros (Strength) half way through seem more acceptable. So far on my Freeletics Journey, I’ve not give up on any workout, so I’ve wanted to keep my winning streak intact. But the aborted pull-up sets have kind of broken that streak.

However, I didn’t stop the pull-ups because I was tired, more that I physically couldn’t do them. I’ve tried to think of a metaphor here, but I couldn’t. So you’ll just have to make do with the facts.

Speaking of facts. Apologies – today is a bit technical. Promise I’ll be a bit more interesting later this week.

Anyway, today, Coach gave me Kentauros (Strength), 50 burpees, 50 burpees, 50 pull-ups, 50 pull-ups. I couldn’t work out this morning before work, so was left to do the whole lot this evening. Let’s just say I didn’t make it past Kentauros.

First of all, I was doing it in my living room so I changed to 2×2. Let’s look at the difference between the normal and 2×2 versions:

Normal
2 x 20m Lunge Walk
10 High Jumps
2 x 20m Burpee Deepfrogs
10 High Jumps

2×2
40 x Split Lunges
10 High Jumps
40 Burpee Squat Jumps
10 High Jumps

All of that, six times.

When you look at the leaderboards for both of those, the results are interesting. People I follow on Freeletics largely came from the SubReddit. They’re people who are fairly advanced, and that keeps me going.

Top time in the normal version is 18:52 (congratulations Nils W), with a bottom score of 50:47 (Chris Letic).

Top time in the 2×2 version is Juan Luis (47:36), with a bottom score of 48:08 from Tore Rasmussen. This suggests to me that the 2×2 version is much harder. It certainly felt like it.

I had to stop a few times for about 3 minutes each time, and about half way through the third set of 40 Burpee Squat Jumps I had to revert to normal burpees. Later on I also stopped doing the Split Lunges and had to do normal ones.

It was very hard. The only things I could do quickly and with good form were the jumps. The whole thing took me 01:07:10. Ugh.

No way I was doing the extra 100 burpees and pull-ups after that. I almost gave up when I wasn’t even half way through. My thighs burned. My wrists hurt from lying on my mat, in position for burpees, for too long while I mustered the energy to jump.

So yeah, I didn’t really enjoy it today. I’m going to the burpees and pull-ups tomorrow.

I’m surprised that Coach gave me all of that on one day. Feels like an awful lot. And like an algorithm selected it rather than a real person. Especially as when I did the pull-ups last week I said it was ‘Maximum’… I guess this is the first time that I doubted Freeletics. But maybe that’s just because I found it hard, and I should just toughen up and get on with it.

Onwards…