As I was saying in my previous posts, I'm trying myself to make 2015 the year of no excuses. In that line, I've re-activated my coach and I'm starting to do Freeletics on a regular basis again. I started off by doing half Aphrodite on a Sunday a couple weeks ago and I was really sore until Thursday that week! Since I'm in the final rounds of my summer soccer league, I didn't want to see my performance on the field be affected by sore quads and wiggly legs, so I kept off of Freeletics. On Monday, however, I will play the semi-finals, and if we win, the final will be on Wednesday. That means soccer will be over, no matter what, this week. Therefore I thought now was the perfect time to keep momentum and "replace" soccer (which will most likely not start over until April) with Freeletics.
One of the things I like the most about the "new" Coach is how personalized it is. When I started doing Freeletics back in August 2013 we used to get e-mails with PDF instructions of the workouts with a few pointers and a couple of photos. Today, however, the Coach had me taking a fitness test to assess my current fitness level and plan my next week of training accordingly.
The first step is to fill your profile; basically it asks your age, height and weight.
Then the coach asks about your previous sports experience, which of course is very relevant to asses the athleticism and fitness of any individual. It also asks about the frequency of weekly training.
Then you have to actually take the test; PushUp Max (100 sec), Squat Max (300 sec) and SitUp Max (300 sec). All exercises must be done in the star version. I did them all in a row, with two minute breaks in between exercises. The Squats made me sweat quite a bit! Overall I think I did decently (considering the months of inactivity) although I still have little to no upper-body strength as you can tell by my lazy 17 PushUps... Well, this is what I'm training for!
Finally I had to tell the coach what my focus is: Cardio for losing fat, Strength for gaining muscle or Both. I've always considered that the more balanced a workout is, the better. I don't want to become super lean and loose my strength on the soccer field, but I also don't want to just build muscle and loose speed or overall cardio fitness, so I still think a balanced approach suits me best for now. Maybe in the future I may change to strength mode, just to get a bit bigger and tighter. Also, since this week I will still have one or two soccer matches, I asked to only train twice -another feature I love about the new coach because it matches up better with the reality of how much time I can spend training, how tired I am after soccer, and it eliminates the mental burden that before was constantly saying "You had to train 4 times this week. It is Friday and you've only trained once. You'll have to train today, tomorrow and the day after to reach your weekly goal, otherwise you will have failed".
So after I cliked the "Start your Coach" blue button, the Coach told me what my two workouts for next week will be. I will be posting about them when they are done, but for now I'm just going to say that one of them is a well known old friend and the other one terrified me... until I realized it is a slightly simpler version of the WOD I knew from before the Coach, so I'm thinking now it's within my possibilities. I'm excited!!! Wish me luck and keep tuned for updates and more descriptions on the features of the coach!
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