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.

 

After 2.5 years of doing Freeletics, I’ve finally mastered the pullup.

This is not me. But you could imagine it’s me feeling on top of the world. Photo by photo-nic.co.uk nic on Unsplash

Today was a MAJOR MILESTONE day. After a few weeks off doing Coach’s workouts, today I got back on it.

And, I might add, that I almost went out for drinks after work. Had my friend not cancelled on me I’d have been in the pub. Instead, I came home, forbade myself to sit on the sofa and got straight into my training gear. As soon as I got going, I knew I’d made a good decision.

Here’s what Coach had in store:

4 x Archer Pullups

12 x Crunches

Interval (Upper Body, Abs)
4 rounds of…
4 x Strict Pullups
8 x Pikes
8 x Plank Switches
60 sec rest

2/4 Venus (Standard)

First up, Archer Pullups. My pullup bar is in a fairly narrow doorway and so I can’t really do Archer Pullups effectively. Also I find doing these in correct form very difficult, so I used my resistance band to help.

Crunches, no problem.

And then, interval. I decided to see if I could do strict pullups, not expecting to be able to. But I COULD. And fairly easily. I couldn’t believe it. The third and fourth sets were a bit more difficult, but I managed to do all 16 pullups with correct form and with no assistance. So after two and half years of doing Freeletics and struggling with pullups, I’ve finally mastered them.

I seriously think this is down to me doing 10 x Assisted Pullups pretty much every day for the past few months (even when I wasn’t doing coach workouts).

I’m so pleased. And it’s given me a real boost to rebuild my Freeletics habit.

Freeletics Bodyweight 4.0 Review #2

I’ve now done two more days of the new Coach. And I have to say I’m really enjoying it. The workouts are shorter and more intense, and I’m finding that they’re really working my muscles a lot harder (I’m have more of that satisfying soreness – is it satisfying?).

Yesterday I did:

10 Jumps
Poseidon

The jumps, pan, no problem. I did Poseidon in 04:09, but no star because I still can’t do perfect form pullups.

And then today, the final day of my three-day Coach week, was

Conditioning
Interval: Core, Upper Body.
3 rounds of:
Commando Pullups Left x10
Side Plank Twists Left x15
Side Plank Twists Right x15
Commando Pullups Right x10
Plank Switches x10

Taking each in turn:

Commando Pullups
I found these relatively straightforward although I’m not doing them correct form. I could just about do 3 the other day and it was the same this time. Then I started having to give myself a little jump start.

Side Plank Twists
I liked these. I could feel that they will be good for core strength, but they were also nice stretches. They got more testing later on in the workout.

Plank Switches
I also enjoyed these. They were fairly tough later on, but they were a nice change from pushups.

I’m really liking how the workouts are quite quick, but work your muscle groups really hard. I am finding it much easier to do before work. And not racing against the clock means that I’m much more likely to concentrate on whether I’m doing things right, rather than trying to beat a PB.

I’ve set the next Coach week to 2 workouts which I’ll do later this week, as I’ve now done four days in a row (including two swimming sessions and an hour’s bike ride).

While I’m here, a quick update on nutrition…

I’ve been making some really conscious changes to my diet. These include:

• Cutting out bread as much as possible
• Low carb lunches (usually a chicken salad or similar)
• Porridge or overnight protein oats for breakfast
• As much fruit and veg as possible, certainly more than five pieces a day
• Shit-loads of water
• Cutting down on beer and wine in favour of spirits, and cutting down my drinking alcohol at all to one or two nights a week.
• Higher protein content in most meals (last night’s steak was delicious!)