I finished my latest Freeletics journey last week. And as I write this I noticed that there’s no way on the app to see which journeys you’ve done already. That would be useful, wouldn’t it?
Anyway, I’m now in week 1 of Weights-Free Gain. Lowest cardio impact, but highest muscle impact. I’m getting my cardio through using the Freeletics Running app.
I’m excited about this new journey. Will finish it just before Christmas. I did the first workout yesterday, which was fairly straightforward – and I tried to be honest with my feedback so that the assessment week can properly set intensity for the next few weeks. I was pleased that yesterdays was a long-ish workout though as I’ve felt that some of the workouts recently have been very brief.
It’s the same old story for me though. I can stick to the programme and do the running, but I need to work really hard at my diet – less alcohol and fewer carbs/fat (or more protein).
So yeah. I’m going to keep blogging through this journey. Next time I’ll share before pictures and stats to keep me accountable.
This is probably going to be my last entry of 2018.
I’ve been really slack on Freeletics these past few weeks. This time I really don’t have any excuses. I’ve been lazy or hungover for most of December and also unwilling to get cold, blah blah… Been feeling guilty. I did do one Coach work out last week that was kind of okay, but I think I’ve been kind of waiting for the end of the year to restart everything.
And so yesterday I redid the assessment to end the current coach week I was stuck in. And low and behold, it presented Hell Week as my next Coach week.
The thing is, it’s Boxing Day today and I’m on holiday until the 3 January when I fly to New York for a 10 days for work (which will mean working into the evening/social events etc). All of which isn’t very inclusive to doing Hell Week properly. I won’t have a pullup bar etc. So I’ve decided to do some low intensity workouts over the next week to get myself back into it before tackling Hell Week on my return from NYC. Today I did Rhea, which was quick and easy.
*
And as the year draws to a close, I’m reflecting on how well I’ve been at sticking to my habits/goals.
Here are my goals for the year, and how I did:
Take four weeks’ holiday – FAIL (although I did take three, which is better than usual)
Visit a continent I’ve never been to before – FAIL
Pay off my credit card debt – FAIL
Read 26 books – I read five 😦
Have four days per week when I don’t drink – I managed at least two days every week
Do Freeletics at least three times per week – on average I managed 2 times per week
Inbox zero every week day – there were 21 working days when I didn’t do this, which I think it pretty good!
Swim once per week – I did this 39 times
Eat 5 fruit and veg per day – 188 times over the year
Drink 3 litres of water – usually managed this
There were also a few other work-related ones which won’t mean anything to you.
So, a mixed bag.
Over the next couple of days I’m going to set my goals for the coming year and I’ll let you know what they are.
For any productivity nerds out there, I’ve just switched from the Momentum app to ‘Done’, which is a lot more pleasing and flexible. Looking forward to using it in 2019 to track my habits.
In my last post I talked about ‘getting back to it’. That was almost a month ago. And to be honest not much has happened since then. Eek. I’ve been feeling tired and wintry and unmotivated. I haven’t even been swimming. I have been away for two weekends, but you know, #noexcuses…
I work from home on Friday so I made myself exercise first thing. It wasn’t too hard, but the workout included 2x Krios. I’ve said this before, but the first time I did this I gave myself a star and did it in about 11 minutes. It seems that there’s no option on the Freeletics app now to beat your previous time rather than your PB, but maybe I’m wrong. Anyway, it took much longer than 11 minutes and I was still doing assisted pullups.
So I worked out twice last week. Going to aim for four times this week so that I’ll have done six workouts over two weeks. Also going to make sure I swim too.
And then it’s almost Christmas. Which will be tough. And then a new start for 2019.
Blimey. Haven’t written this blog since November. Where does the time go?
Even though I usually train indoors rather than outdoors, I’ve been finding it really hard to find the motivation to get up and exercise. Something about the cold weather, the desire to hibernate. So I haven’t been training regularly. And then I was ill for a few days just before Christmas, and then there was Christmas. However hard I try, I’m just not one of those people posting pictures of their Christmas Day workouts on Instagram. I’m in soft clothes, drinking red wine and eating chocolate.
I did manage to not completely overdo it over Christmas though. My parents are getting old and their appetite is shrinking, so there just wasn’t the usual level of gluttony of years gone by. So as I enter January, I’m not feeling too unhealthy. Although I did rather overdo it on New Year’s Eve, so yesterday was a complete write-off.
Today’s Training
So this morning, my last day before I go back to work, I made myself get out of bed and train. As much because I find that working out helps curb that too-much-booze anxiety that often comes with a hangover.
Thankfully Coach wasn’t too hard on me for my first workout of 2018. It was:
20 Lunges
2 Split Lunges
Conditioning: Abs and Legs – 20 Squats, 20 Side Lunges, 10 Knee-wipes
1/4 Venus
There’s something hilarious about the algorithm – sorry, Coach – giving you 2 split lunges. It’s over in about 2 seconds. Surely there should be a way that Freeletics could put a lower limit on any one exercise.
Anyway, it felt good to get moving again and I was glad I dragged myself out of bed.
Trying to Unlock Advanced Skills
I also managed to squeeze in a workout on the day before New Year’s Eve – that in between bit between Christmas and New Year where no one really knows what to do with themselves.
After doing the workout – 6/10 Gaia and interval – I decided to try and unlock some of the advanced skills. It didn’t end well.
I did manage to do 5 OH Push-ups, and I’m going to start trying to do them alongside my Coach workouts, in the same way as I do assisted pull-ups. And then I tried to do a Pistol Squat, which was just impossible, and a HS Pushup, which was also laughably hard. I just couldn’t do it. And then when I came out of it, I didn’t let my legs fall as one would normally do when coming out of a handstand. Instead, I kind of slid down the wall, which kind of crunched up my head/neck. It was pretty painful. And a stupid way of trying to come out of the push-up. Felt like I could have done some serious damage if I’d carried on. Thankfully I figured out what I should have done and did that. Was in pain for about two days. Which was lovely. Suffice to say, I didn’t unlock those two. It did make me think that in those training videos, Freeletics should show how to get into and out of those more difficult skills. It would really help.
Yoga
As a result of the neck pain, I ended up doing a YouTube yoga workout to try and relieve it. And it kind of worked. I think I’m going to try and do more yoga in 2018 alongside Freeletics, to try and increase my flexibility and sort out some niggling muscle pain I get every now and then. This is the video I did, in case you want to do it to:
I might do his 30 Day Total Body Yoga Workout Challenge. Looks great and might get me into the habit of doing it regularly.
2018 Goals
So, what’s my plan for 2018? I’ve been doing Freeletics for over two years now. I certainly haven’t do the 15 week transformation that the YouTube videos show. I guess when I started I didn’t want a quick fix, I wanted a way to exercise regularly, and that’s what I use Freeletics for. But I would like to build my strength, particularly in my arms, and I’d like to lose a bit more belly fat – I suspect that will be more down to diet than to exercise, so I’m going to make a real effort to eat well and drink less (pretty standard New Year resolution stuff here). But I think I also want to increase my flexibility, and build consistency – fewer breaks, more regular workouts. I suspect that’s the key to really making progress.
And maybe by this time next year, I’ll be able to do a couple more of those advanced skills.
Have to admit, I did stop training over Christmas. And only started again the other day.
My final pre-Christmas workout was Uranos, where I beat my PB, and then on Christmas Eve (when I was sick of my family already and itching to do something physical) I knocked out a quick Athena.
I’d kind of forgotten that I can break with Coach every now and then and do those super-quick, no equipment workouts wherever and whenever. It felt quite nice to do a quick 7 minute workout, just to get the blood flowing.
And then post Christmas I was straight back to it with KENTAUROS. Jeez. I did it on a beautiful, sunny, freezing cold day in the park. Even though it was cold I was sweating buckets by the end. Blimey that workout tires me out. And my legs were aching for days.
On Monday evening, just before going to back to work after the break, I did Artemis. I quite like this workout – 50 burpees, 50 pull-ups, 100 pushups, 150 squats, 50 burpees. I beat my PB, but no star (still not mastered the pull-up).
The other thing I did this week was cancel my gym membership. Probably the opposite of what everyone else is doing at this time of year. £17 per month, and I wasn’t really using it. I’ve decided that wherever possible I will exercise at home or outdoors. And that there shouldn’t really be any excuses about that. I don’t need the gym.
My work-out in the park in Brazil seems like a very long time ago. Since then I’ve returned to the UK, fitted one more work out in before Christmas (more on that shortly) and had a little break for the festivities. Now it’s nearly New Year, and so I’m trying to get back into the swing of things before January so that 2016 doesn’t come as too much of a shock.
So Week 3 continued with Prometheus (Endurance). I only selected three workouts for Week 3 as I knew I’d be travelling and very busy until Christmas.
I did this workout at the gym. In the area they use for classes. I like it in there because I’m not visible to the rest of the gym, and people can’t see me flopping about and getting all red and sweaty.
As a side note, now I’ve signed up to Freeletics, it seems weird that people use machines rather than their own body to keep fit, but hey.
Prometheus was hard, but not crippling. I’d also had a fair bit to drink the night before.
And then it was Christmas. I decided not to work out back at my parents’ house. Mainly because they’d look at me like I was mad, but also because I needed a bit of a break from everything.
So yesterday once I was back in Bristol, I did my first workout in the park just up from my house. It’s kind of perfect for freeletics. Although at first I did feel a little self-conscious working out with the houses nearby looking over me. I quickly forgot about that once I was doing 2/3 Hades. Blimey, that was HARD. The sprawlers were really difficult. Didn’t help that I had only had a cup of tea before the workout, so by the end I could barely walk. Pretty much mainlined a bowl of porridge and a banana afterwards.
View from the mat
I think I’m going to find the pull-ups the most difficult. I can just about do one properly, but only just, so when I saw that Week 4, Day 1 was Poseidon, I could have cried. A total of 55 pull-ups. Ha! No chance.
I managed to do the push-ups correctly, although towards the end I reckon Coach would have had a word or two about my form, but there was no chance with the pull-ups. Did them as jumping pull-ups, and even that was hard.
Have a feeling that I’m not going to be able to lift anything up later.
Diet and weight
A quick word or two on this… I’ve been using MyFitnessPal to monitor what I’m eating. Here’s where I started:
11 st, 13 lbs (November 2015)
I had a Goal Weight of 10 st, 7 lbs (which I now think is far too low), and so MyFitnessPal was recommending I eat 2370 calories a day.
I regularly come in well below my goal, but I don’t seem to be losing weight. Now, there are probably two reasons for this:
Inaccurate recording of actual calories consumed
Weight gained through muscle growth
I suspect the first one is the most likely at the moment, as although I’ve certainly been gaining muscle and family have commented on my physique (they don’t see me very often), it’s not a vast change (yet!).
This morning I weighed in at 12 st, 1 lbs, so gaining weight! I don’t really mind this, but I do want to shift that beer belly.
So I’m going to do Dry January. I suspect that the belly is mainly from beer and wine, as my diet is pretty healthy. I partly want to do it because I’ve never given up drinking for a sustained period before, and also because work will be busy, so it will allow me to focus a bit on getting fit and getting loads done at work.
I also did a Big Shop yesterday – loads of fruit, veg, seeds and protein – and I’ve been planning my meals for the next week, which should help me save money and eat well.
Tomorrow’s workout is Hermes. I like the look of Hermes. Mainly because I want to get better at running…
A Freeletics Journey 