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,

Coach W5D2 - 5/6 Kentauros (Endurance)

 5/6 Kentauros (E): *00:37:26 

On Saturday night I did the second and last training session of week #5 of my Cardio&Strength Coach... In front of me was a modified version of the much dreaded Kentauros: 5/6 Kentauros, with endurance focus.

Modified workouts are, I think, one of the nicest features of the "new" Coach. The same workout (eg. Aphrodite or Kentauros) can be performed in a standard, endurance or strength version, each with the "same" exercises performed in a different way to focus more on a specific goal.

About the endurance focus, the coach says:

Endurance workouts consist of less complex movements that allow experienced athletes to train with higher volume and focus on cardiovascular endurance. They are also suited to introduce beginners to the sport of Freeletics.

I'd like to say I fall in the "experienced athletes" category, but I actually feel more like a "beginner" when it comes to Kentauros!

As you can read on previous posts, I'd done Kentauros (standard) 2 times before. The first time I could not finish it; it took me 40 minutes to do 3 of the 6 rounds, got painfully bruised knees from the lunge walk, was absolutely crushed and just couldn't move past the gigantic mental wall I was in front of. That was the first -and only time- I've quit in the middle of a workout. After that I started progressively declining -motivation wise- and when I had to do Kentauros again, I stopped Freeletics completely; that is how big that mental wall was. A few weeks later I came back to finish Kentauros; using knee protectors it took me an hour and a quarter to finish all 6 rounds. It was awful and I could barely walk for a week after that.

The endurance version of Kentauros is still hard, but MUCH more friendly than the standard one, not only because it is 5 rounds instead of 6 (hence the "5/6"), but mostly because the exercises are different; the lunge walks are HH (Hand-Helped),the high jumps replaced by high knees and the burpee frogs by sprawl frog jumps.

I was very tired and out of breath for most of the workout but got through it in a fairly decent time. I forgot to use knee protectors and I got again both of my knees bruised from hitting the cement during the lunge walks... still I powered through and actually the lunges were my "active rest" time. Being HH actually makes a big difference. The same goes to the high knees, which are much easier than the high jumps. When you are on round number 5, you appreciate those seemingly slight differences all the more!!! I have not many nice things to say about the sprawl frog jumps; they are just slightly less horrible than the burpee frog. Instead of a full burpee  followed by a forward keep-your-feet-together jump you just go into plank position and then jump. Again, the extra energy you get from not going down makes all the difference to get through 5 rounds of this!

Today my gluteus and hamstrings are sore, but not as much as I feared. My gluts hurt quite a bit when I'm sitting, (specially on the hard toilet! xD) but I'm pleased I decently got through week#1 of my comeback to Freeletics . Now I'm hungry for more!!!