Freeletics is a fitness-program that combines high intensity functional body weight training with running exercises.
Find my 15 weeks training program here: Freeletics
Tag Archives: HIT
Freeletics coach – Week 15 HELLWEEK!!
Freeletics – coach week 15 Part 1
The 15th week of a Freeletics program is essential – it’s the Hellweek! That means 7 days of training, no rest-day and always giving everything. The mere amount of exercises might seem impossible at first – but you are a Free-Athlete and nothing is impossible! Just keep going, you will be surprised what potential you developed over the past weeks.
During this week you will put your body under huge stress, so the key elements of a healthy lifestyle (like mentioned many times before) are more important than ever! I can not stress it enough: Eat clean, sleep enough (7-8 hours) and trink a lot of water! During Hellweek the recovery phases will be extremely low so you need to provide your body with the best you can do in this short periods.
Freeletics – coach week 15 Part 2
The most challenging part will be the mental negotiation to do a workout every day. After 3 or 4 days you will reach the edge of your physical capacity. Your workout times will become longer and that is normal. You might want to take a day of and if you must, you can. This was my second Hellweek and as I remember, during my first Hellweek I did a rest-day on day 6 – but did the 6th and the 7th workout on the last day. This time I went through with the whole thing and even did some extra exercises and broke a lot of PBs even on the second half of the week.
During this Hellweek I did:
- 595 Burpees
- 280 HS-Pushups
- 560 Pullups
- 705 Pushups
- 905 Situps
- 1550 Squats
- 275 Jumps
- 425 Straight Leg Levers
- and a little bit of running
To overcome this immense workload will make you strong – mentally and physically. But let’s not talk – let’s do it! Have fun with the Hellweek and don’t let it get you – you can do it!
Freeletics coach – week 13 & 14
Hey, I am back! Sorry for not posting for two weaks – but I had a lot of things to do. My project at work is at a critical state and everybody had to work a lot of extra hours. It is a software development project and we are slowly running out of developers – to complete my currently assigned tasks in time, I would have to clone myself three times 😛
Freeletics coach – week 13
But anyhow, now christmas holidays are about to start and it got a little more quiet and I finally found the time to write this post. During the past two weeks the freeletics workouts were a really good distraction from work. Nothing is better to clear your mind after a hard business week than a good and intense workout – besides alcohol, but you feel much better afterwards…So, today I want to talk about how freeletics – or sports in general – have an influence on my performance at my working place.
Training made me much more resistent to stress and increased my productivity. Before I worked out so much, being at the office for 8 or more hours exhausted me. It was hard to work extra hours and if I did one day, I left earlier on the next day because I had no more energy. And even on a normal working day, I felt that my productivity was at a really low level for the last 2 or 3 hours at work. On a stressful day, this point was reached even earlier. Most of the time, when I returned from work I was so tired,  I didn’t want to go out  anymore.
Now – here are the differences. I worked almost 10 hours every day for the past 2 weeks and this feeling of having my head full of things, that always gave me a headache during the day did not come. Many of my coworkers, who had to work extra hours too, were on a bad mood after short period of time or even got sick because of the stress. I didn’t. I can not really explain why – I had more to do then ever before, and even much more demanding things – but they never tied me down. I suppose it is because of the following things:
Freeletics coach – week 14
First, I feel better than ever before in my life. Eating healthy and habitually doing sports are the basis for this. If you are in a healthy and physically good state, progress will come and with progress comes self-esteem and confidence. And other people realize this and they will treat you in a much better way. You can work much more productive because your body is much more reliable and during stressful times it is easier for you to focus and keep your head clear. I realized this in many grueling meetings during the past days where complex things were discussed over hours. Most of the people got confused, lost their focus, got angry or backed down completely. And even though I was a rather small fish among these people, it was me who tied the important topic back on the agenda or showed solutions when it seemed like we ran into a dead end many times. Before I changed my lifestyle, I was rather the guy who was sitting in meetings and just trying to follow and it was always another person who brought up the solution.
Another key factor is the will to take challenges. If you are doing high intense sports, you will not be able to avoid challenging yourself. And if you do, you will see that almost every challenge can be achieved if you just try it. You may fail for the first time, but in the end you will succeed. You will learn that every challenge, however big it may look, can be beaten. You just have to keep going, focus on the next step but not loose the main target…And always care for yourself. As I said, a healthy body is the basis for all this. Eat clean, do sports, sleep sufficient, trink a lot (water or tee) and no or at least just a little alcohol.
You can see the workouts I did in week 13 and 14 in the two pictures. Week 15 is going to be the last week of this coach ( the coach will continue but I will stop to write a post every week). It is going to be a hellweek, I know this because I am already in it and almost at the end, as I am writing this lines. But you will see it next week. Until then, keep going, take your vitamins and remember: even though life is hard some times – you can be harder!
sincerely yours
Stefan
PS: here are are some inspirational pictures of healthy food 😉
fish with vegetables, brown rice and tzatziki
whole-grain noodles with prawns and pesto
wholemeal sandwich with grilled vegetables, sheep milk cheese and salad
Freeletics – HIT Techniques
Freeletics is a form of high intensity training (HIT). HIT is not new, there are different forms of HIT techniques and workouts since the 1970’s. High intensity workouts are basically all based on the following principle.
There are 4 levels of intensity:
Pullups – do easier versions (like jumping-pullups) or take slight breaks (5-10 seconds) if your muscles are to tired to complete the whole exercise.
- Level one is when you work with a submaximal number of repetitions. Lets say you could do 10 repetitions but only do 8.
- Second level is, when you go to your maximum – you do the 10 repetitions.
- Third level means you go over the point of muscle fatigue – you do the 10 repetitions and try to do one more, it might not be a complete exercise and there will be the point when the movement has to be interrupted.
- Level 4 is where high intensity training begins. You go until you reach your maximum and then use the following HIT techniques to do even more.
To bring your muscles behind the point of failure, there are several techniques that can be used for different kind of exercises and depending on your personal favor. At the beginning it might be hard enough to finish a freeletics workout in acceptable time but later, when you get stronger an more experienced you can use HIT techniques to make even faster progresses.
Interval training
This technique is particularly suitable for bodyweight training like Freeletics. If you reach the point of muscle failure, take a short break (5 to 10 seconds) and then try to do some more repetitions. You can repeat this multiple times. As some of the Freeletics workouts contain exercises with a lot of repetitions (like 100 pushups in Artemis) that you can not do in one go at first, you might even do this without knowing that it is a HIT technique.
Particular repetitionsÂ
This is also good for Freeletics and even included in the regular workout routines. When you reach the point of muscle failure, and you can not do an extra repetition, do a slightly modified, easier version. In Freeletics for almost every exercise there is a easier version that you can do, when the actual exercise is to hard. You won’t get a star for your workout, but you will get better at it.
An other possibility is to do the additional repetitions with swing (for example when doing pull-ups) but be careful as the risk of injury is increased. Also the strain on the muscles is lower that when doing easier versions of the exercise. This should only be used by experienced athletes.
The “Afterburner”
This is a technique that you only should use if you are on an advanced fitness level. You combine two exercises that target the same muscles and do them right one after another without a break. The first exercise (basis) will put the weight on your smaller muscles while the second exercise will stress the bigger muscle. You will find these pattern in some Freeletics workouts and in the coach, but you can also use it to combine your own exercises and workouts if you don’t work with the coach.
Most of these techniques are already implemented in the Freeletics workouts and you might be doing them already without knowing it. But I think it is interesting to understand why the workouts are built the way they are and that it is normal and desired that you don’t do the 100 pushups in one rush. This is not a sign of weakness – this is HIT training.
I hope you found this helpful 🙂
Never Quit!
undevined 