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October 12, 2014

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Freeletics coach – Week 5

Trying the HS-Pushups at a palm-tree

Trying the HS-Pushups at a palm-tree

This week I was on the beautiful island of Guadeloupe in the caribbean sea with 3 of my friends. I decided to continue with my workout plan, although it might be challenging to to integrate the exercises in our travel plans. But I have to say, it was easier than I thought. I tried to do the workouts in the morning or in the evening when the sun was not that aggressive and my friends where still sleeping. One of them is quite sportive too and he joined me for some of the exercises – but as everybody who is new to freeletics he could barely complete a workout.

Pull-ups at the beach

Pull-ups at the beach

One of the best things about freeletics is, that you can do it almost everywhere. The only thing that was sometimes hard to find, was a place to do the pull-ups. There are many possibilities like trees, bars on buildings or walls. Keep your eyes open and be creative.

Apart from this exercises I did a lot of other activities like hiking, swimming, running and other exercises with my friends on the beach. So from that point of view it was no problem to continue my workout routine. The only bigger problem I experienced was with nutrition. As Guadeloupe is a small tropical island with not much industry much of the food has to be imported and is accordingly expensive. I ate a lot of chicken to get the amount of protein I usually take, but being with 3 other people all the time made it hard to always get my “special treatment” regarding the nutrition. If everybody wants to eat hamburgers for dinner and there is no alternative around, you have to defer to the majority. Also rum is cheap in the caribbean and on your vacation you always want some fun too. But fortunately fresh fruits are cheap here, so the recovering from hangovers and the vitamin input is no problem.  I was far away from beating my PBs this week but at least I completed all the workouts.

I could not make a screenshot of my workout plan this week, as WiFi spots were also rare during the past days, so I write it down this way:

  • Day 1: Artemis
  • Day 2: Poseidon 2X
  • Day 3: Kentauros
  • Day4: Artemis

Now we are continuing our trip to Dominica. Other than Guadeloupe it does not belong to the european union (Guadeloupe was a french colony and is under french administration) but is a independent nation. It is much more native and less developed than Guadeloupe so it might be harder to find safe places for the workouts or get the nutrition I want…but I will see, and from what I heard so far, they have chicken there as well 😉

Here are some pictures of the trip so far, enjoy:

 

 

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September 30, 2014

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Freeletics Coach – Week 4

Freeletics coach week 4

Freeletics coach week 4

This week I keep it short. I am going on vacation to the caribbean sea and have a lot of things to prepare. Anyhow I will try to keep up with my coach and do all the workouts. Let’s see if I stay motivated to do Burpees on the white sand beach. I will also try to post something here.

The 4th week was kind of hard, after the 15k run on the first day my legs hurt the whole week, but I kept going. I was far away from PBs this week, I remember having that kind of a through in my last 15Weeks challenge as well in the 4th or 5th week. Don’t let this tear you down, keep going, progress will come. Apart from that I found a nice spot to do the workouts not far from my home. It is a playground with a basketball field and there is the possibility to to pull-ups and to go an a run, as it is located in a park. I also found a training group that meets in my town to do the workouts together. After my vacation I will try to join them more often.

So, the train to the airport leaves in 5 hours, time to finish packing and doing the last workout at home for the next 3 weeks.

See you soon!

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September 21, 2014

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Freeletics Coach – Third Week

This was my third week of the new Freeletics strength coach. You can see the workout plan in the image below. I can not really say what the focus  was – partly on upper body, especially on chest with the two venus sessions that include 200 pushups each. But Kentauros and Gaia gave me nice burning thighs, too.

Freeletics strength coach - week 3

Freeletics strength coach – week 3

It was raining a lot this week, so I did most of the workouts inside. Sadly I cancelled my gym membership last week, so I had to do the workouts at home. This can be a huge pain in the a**, you sweat more, don’t have that much fresh air and maybe your neighbors beneath will not be amused after a workout like Gaia where you are literally jumping all the time. But it’s better than not working out at all.

Why did I cancel my gym membership? Because I’ve not been there since I started with freeletics and I have to commit, even some month before that…and in that case 80€ per month are huge waste of money. Also I did not really like going there. It was always crowded and you never could do a workout without waiting for a machine to be free.

I was at three different gyms so far and it was always the same: A trainer constructed a workout plan (which was basically the same in every studio) at the beginning and I started to follow the plan. After some time I increased the weights or the repetitions, but anyhow it got boring after a while. So I started to look for more advanced and effective exercises, read books, searched the internet or asked people at the gym (not the trainers because they never had time – or the gym wanted extra money for their time). This was time-consuming and I found a confusing set of opinions about what workout philosophy is the best.

In every gym, after a while I was responsible for my workout routine all by myself. No trainier helped me, there where no given targets, except the ones I set myself. And that is the point when I always started to cheat. “I had a hard day today, I will skip and go tomorrow” – “I’ll just do a short workout today” and suddenly I realized – Oops I didn’t go there the whole week. Setting targets and challenging yourself is key for improving in every kind of sport. But especially in the beginning you might try to find a lot of excuses. There will be the point when you stop doing this, when sport becomes an essential part of your everyday life and you do no longer cheat yourself. Just keep going!

But why is it so hard to do this? One point is, that creating a diversified, challenging and effective workout routine is complex and takes a lot of knowledge and time – or you spent a lot of money in a personal trainier. With the freeletics coach you get all this for a good price. There is a lot of knowledge behind the creation of the plans and a huge variety of exercises. The aims may be high in the beginning but you will grow and reach them and once you completed you first workouts with a star or beating repeatedly you personal best time you get hungry and always want more! And the best part is, even after the 20week that I do freeletics now,  the coach sets challenging targets. I love it!

So enough for today, I bought new shoes yesterday and now I have to try them on the 15km run the coach has given me to start week  no. 4. Stay focused and no excuses! Success will come as long as you are trying!

Peace 😉

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September 17, 2014

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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:

Pull-ups

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.

  1. Level one is when you work with a submaximal number of repetitions. Lets say you could do 10 repetitions but only do 8.
  2. Second level is, when you go to your maximum – you do the 10 repetitions.
  3. 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.
  4. 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 repetitions 

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!

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September 12, 2014

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Freeletics Coach – Second Week

Week number two is over…and I have to say – don’t mess with the new coach! On the feedback of the first week I responded that the training program was “way to easy”…so the coach generated a much tougher workout for this week. You can see the result in the image below.

Freeletics strength coach - week 2

Freeletics strength coach – week 2

At first I thought, yeah this is much better. But after the first day, my whole body hurt. I also had to work a lot and was really tired in the evenings. And I made the mistake to do the workouts on the first training day outside in the rain with inappropriate clothing. I felt like getting sick afterwards. I knew that I had to take a break – so I paused for three days and started from the beginning.

With the old coach you had 20 weeks to complete your 15 weeks workout. What I understood from the FAQ of the new coach, this is now longer the case.  After 15 weeks your subscription will continue, but you have to pay again…no matter how many weeks you completed.

Anyhow, it is important to take your time to regenerate. I always tell myself, that freeletics is still cheaper than a gym – so what. And I also think that it makes no sense to stop after the 15 weeks, maintaining a healthy lifestyle is about integrating sports and good nutrition in your everyday life and not about doing short periods of diet or sports.

So after my three days break I returned and this time I managed to complete the week in time (6 days). The focus of this week was clearly on legs. I had to do a lot of jumping-jacks, froggers, different versions of squats and climbers. For details check the workouts of my plan on the left side.

When I completed my last 15 weeks coach (cardio & strength) I was able to complete each workout with a star in the end. In the first week of the new coach, this was no problem too. But now I had to go back the the easier version of some exercises (pistols, froggers and Hand-Stand Pushups) as it was simply to hard. But I think this is good – there has to be potential to improve. At the beginning of the 15 weeks it is normal that you can not complete all workouts of even not one workout with a star – don’t worry this will happen soon enough. Set your goals and keep trying.

What helps me a lot is to make a strategy for every exercise. That means that you do the given repetitions in variable blocks. Like

Protein after workout - 536g T-Bone Steak - njam :)

Protein after workout – 536g T-Bone Steak – njam 🙂

for example if you have to do 100 Burpees – in the beginning when you start you try to make them in a whole, but after 30 or 40 you have no power left. And then all the following will be much harder. For me it worked better to do like 6 x 15 and 1 x 10. Later you can increase the repetitions to do 5 x 20, then 4 x 25 and so on. At the moment I would do 2 x 35 and 1 x 30. When I started with this strategies my PBs got much better and I started to make quick efforts in increasing the repetitions.  It gives you a even better control over your workouts and your progress.

So, thats it. Week 2 done! It was hard, but thats how it is supposed to be. It reminded me of my first weeks of freeletics, when I was not sure if I could complete the 15 weeks, but I did and now I know that I can complete this 15 weeks to and the next, and then the next…and so on. I rewarded myself with a big T-Bone Steak this evening – I needed protein and so I think I will sleep very well this night. Let’s see what next week brings.

Have fun, keep going and never quit 🙂