Coach - W7D2 - Dione (Standard) + 1/5 Hyperion (Endurance) // HELL DAY 2

 Dione (S), 00:44:51 

 1/5 Hyperion (E), 00:03:44 

In my previous post I talked about how I had planned my training during Hell Week, taking into consideration I had soccer on Tuesday and Thursday. Hell Day #2 was supposed to be Friday but I had to postpone it until Saturday. The reason: during the first five minutes of my Thursday soccer match I stomped on the ball in an awkward play and bend my knee. It hurt but I kept playing because a) the game was just starting and b) I needed to test drive the knee. I managed to score 3 times in the following 15 minutes (to be fair, the other team was not good at all, we ended up wining 13 - 0) but since the pain wasn't going away I asked to be substituted. The league has a kinesiologist on the pitch who checked me out, ruled out a ligament injury -which was my main concern at that point- and "diagnosed" either a pulled calf muscle or tendon. Either way, he recommended rest and to apply heat if I was too tight or sore. I woke up on Friday and my knee was still hurting when I did some lateral movements and strength tests, so I decided it was wiser not to train. I took an over the counter anti inflammatory and got to work. With all the wall fixing and painting we're doing at the apartment I didn't rest per se, but the walking here and there, bending over, and standing on tip toes to reach the ceiling ended up being for the best because I woke up on Saturday with no pain and ready for freeletics.  

I had two workouts to do throughout this Hell Day. I started off with Dione (standard) which was still a bit hard but much better than on Monday. It actually took me 3 minutes less to finish so I was pleased to see such an improvement within the same week. I still had to do the Leg Levers Hand Helped, so no star. I think it will take me a couple hundred more HH Leg Levers before I can move on to the strict version. I guess it would be a good idea to practice that skill a bit on my free time...

#OntoTheNextOne 

The second workout of the day was 1/5 Hyperion (endurance). I had tried the standard version of Hyperion once just "for fun", so I did not record my time. Since doing only 1 out of 5 series of Pikes, Hand Helped Squats and High Knees seemed like a short workout, I decided it was best if I did it at once, right after Dione with just a couple of minutes of rest. As you can see by my time, it was actually a very short workout, but don't be fooled, that does not make it easy AT ALL.

The Pikes are what set you up to failure here. They are the escalated version of Hand Stand Push Ups and since they are already escalated, seem very friendly and easy to do. Believe me, those things are way harder than they look, specially if you don't have any shoulder strength -like me-. The idea of the Pike is to start with your hands and feet touching the floor, with your butt up in the air and the knees and torso straight, at a 90° angle. Then you have to bend your arms while keeping the knees straight and the torso as straight as you can, and get your head to touch the floor. From that position, you have to push up to resume the starting position. Something like this:

I got to do two Pikes right, and felt confident about them, but from the third on I hit an unbreakable (for now) physical wall. If I got my head to touch the floor, I would just "fall" and get locked in that position and simply could not get my body up... unless I bend my knees a bit and sort of did a kipping-like movement to give me some momentum to get up. It felt really weird to see myself really unable to perform the movement at all. I still need developing more strength to get to do these harder movements right. Thanks to that improvisation, no star on Hyperion either! I did finish fast because I thought it was absolutely pointless to keep trying to do the pikes the right way after a couple of tries, so I ditched the star and moved on while "kipping". Overall it was a not-so-hellish Hell Day,