Second Program: Week #13 (Hell Week)

Week 59: Second Program - week 13 out of 15

Week settings:

• Area of focus: Cardio-Strength
• Number of training days: 4
• Limitations: none
• Last week feedback: "Hard, but ok"

Training:

• Monday: Kronos standard (45:00*) +2/3 Metis strength (06:54* -First time)
• Tuesday: 25 pushups (00:35*) +50 squats (00:57* -First time) +25 Jackknives (01:00* -First time) +Gaia strength (47:01*)
• Wednesday: Artemis standard (25:50*) +Hades standard (22:11*)
• Thursday: 25 burpess (01:20* -First time) +25 pullups (01:22* -PB) +50 pushups (01:51* -PB) +25 High Jumps (00:25* -First time) +Hera strength (23:16*) +boxing training
• Friday: Kronos standard (42:26*) +Ares standard (07:43* -First time new version)
• Saturday: 50 pushups (01:47* -PB) +50 pushups (02:07*) +50 squats (00:59*) +50 squats (00:55* -PB) +Iris standard (30:35* -First time new version)
• Sunday: Aphrodite standard (21:28*) +Hades standard (21:55*)

Statistics:

• 7'125 points
• 307 minutes

  

Week 13 started in shock & awe when this popped-up on the screen of my phone:

Hell Week...
Didn't see this one coming...

Technically I didn't expect either Hell Days the previous time (week 7), but that was bad maths on my part. This time I had really no reason think I would get a Hell Week, as it is traditionally assigned for the last week of the program (as "good bye party"). Not sure if it's a bug or if the new Coach can assign Hell Weeks whenever it wants.



Day 1
Kronos is already pretty tough on its own, but by combining it with Metis strength the Coach was telling me that I should expect no mercy this week!
A session of over 50mn that sets tone for the rest of week...
On the positive side, my Kronos time improved by 28 seconds versus last attempt 2 weeks ago.


Day 2
When I get assigned  a Kronos, Gaia often follows in tow. It happened again.
No need to comment the short exercises, these were just the appetizers before the real thing: Gaia strength.
Up to now I only got either the standard version or a fraction of the strength version. This was my first encounter with the full 10 rounds of Gaia strength. I had a bit of apprehension on how the last 2 rounds would go...
I took me 47:01* to complete the full thing. Compared to the 28-30 minutes range it takes me for the standard version, this shows that Froggers & High Jumps are not just cosmetic changes: the difficulty ramp-up is real.
It was another tough session, but I felt good and was pleased with my performance. My last Gaia strength that was a partial one, with "only" 8 rounds out of the normal 10, completed in  ~41 minutes.
Today my split time after round 8 was at ~38 minutes. A 3 minutes improvement is pretty good. During training, I felt that I had a good pace on froggers. Also I forced myself to complete all the high jumps by sets of 10 in a row, to have a regular effort all along and avoid burning my stamina in the earlier rounds. This tactic paid-off.


Day 3
Artemis+Hades made-up another big session (over 45mn in active training time). Probably due to Monday's Kronos I found the pullups harder than usual, strangely pushups felt much smoother than usual and I completed them rapidly.
By the time I started to work on Hades burpees became harder as well. Especially in the second half, when my pace dropped.


Day 4: the scariest day this week.
The only time I could complete the pullups was in the morning. So I woke-up earlier than usual (I need a good 20-30mn of awake time before starting working out) and did the 4 short exercises indoor.
For Hera strength, I waited lunch time to go outdoor and run. Completing 200 high jumps after after the 300 I already did on Day 2 finished to kill my lower legs. As usual after so many repetitions, I could already feel my tendinitis creeping back. Good thing these were the last jumps of the week.
To make my day complete, in the evening I had an hour & half of boxing training. No need to say that I wasn't in peak condition. Stiff legs & sore arms/shoulders. I had feared that having several workouts spread throughout the day would drain all my energy, but at least cardio & stamina were correct.
I need some sleep!


Day 5
Long day at work, it was only 9pm before I could start training. Hungry & tired with sore muscles, I wasn't thrilled at all at the perspective of going through roughly an hour of gruesome strength training. 
But a Freeathlete got to do what a Freeathetles gotta do, so I started my workout. No effort planning, no tactic, I just took it one rep at a time.

It turned out to be a great session!

After the initial 100 pushups, my body responded very well. The big chunk of abs+squats+leg levers felt very natural and much smoother than usual. Pullups were slightly better than last few attempts. Overall this Kronos took me 42:26*, still far for my old ~38mn PB but much better than Monday's iteration (02:36 gain).
I still have to take breaks during pullups to let my arms/shoulders/back recover. The 100 reps take me ~10 minutes. Breaking my PB will require improving the number of consecutive pullups I can bear to do 100 under 6 minutes (for the records, my performance for 25 stand-alone pullups range between 01:00 and 01:30 so the under 6 minutes target is achievable... Some day...)

And just to make my day better, I finished my session by beating my Ares PB (unbroken for 11 months!) by 1 second. Scoring a new PB on a workout made-up mostly of pullups and situps after Kronos, was completely unexpected. I didn't even try. Yet it happened.

I probably mentioned this already in the past, but I love days like these. Motivation is super low and out of nowhere you pullout a great performance. It's just an amazing feeling. And if you score a PB in these conditions, this PB "tastes" even better than on a regular day.


Day 6
At this stage in my Hell Week, my confidence level was fairly high. The training plan was almost complete and all the "biggies" were behind me (i.e. the Kronos/Gaia/Artemis days).

To complete my assignment I opted for a session before breakfast. I completed the 4 short exercises indoor, before going to a park for Iris.
This workout was tougher than I expected. It started getting pretty cold outside and training at dawn on humid ground is never fun. But I think the main difficulty was that I had not fully recovered from the previous night's session. I felt sluggish, and the climbers killed me (I had to take many breaks to recover my breath).
The app indicated a PB but only because it was the first time that I completed Iris since the new program was launched, my overall performance was ~02:30 above my old PB.


Day 7
Another tough day. As I said, I thought the hardest part of the week was behind me. Technically, it's correct, the most challenging workouts were at the beginning. But in the last 2 days I started to feel the effect of aggregated tiredness from a week worth of training.

I started with good old Aphrodite. For my reunion with this tough lady, I really tried to give my best. I finished ~2:30 above PB.
Last but not least, Hades. Sames thing than for Aphrodite, I was in damage control mode: PB was never in sight but I was giving my max to avoid letting the timer run too far. These last burpees of the week were a nightmare! Results was ~4mn above best performance in the month and ~6mn above 10 months old PB.


Final thoughts on this Hell Week
This was my third Hell Week since starting this Freeletics journey (last 2 iterations were at the end of the free trial and the end of the first program). I have now started to get a good grasp on how to schedule this daily training load around my normal days. But all along the week, I couldn't help but think that the intensity and the overall training load was heavier than what I had done in the past. Now that I'm sitting to write this post, I'm comparing my training records to see if this feeling was justified.

It was.

Looking at the overall load, my first 2 Hell Week took roughly 200 minutes of active training time to complete. This last week represented over 300 minutes of training. That's a big increase.

But if we drill further than just overall length, there are other lessons to be found.
My first Hell Week was 200 minutes long because I was out of shape. These were the days of ~28 minutes Aphrodite and ~33 minutes Dione. So basically, just doing 1 single workout per day mathematically meant circa 200 minutes of training per week.

The second Hell Week started to become more intensive. My Aphrodite & Dione times had improved to respectively ~22 minutes & ~26 minutes. If the week also lasted 200 minutes despite my performance on these basic workouts having improved by nearly 20%, it's simply because the coach had given me more workouts (3 days out of 7, I had to complete a regular workout, with a second workout on top).

This third Hell Week, was made of multiple workouts every day. And not a comibination of short workouts, instead it was packed with long ones such as Kronos, Artemis and Gaia (strength!), with a short/medium workout on top.
Bigger workouts provide less opportunities to rest. 1 Kronos or 10 Poseidon may both take you 40mn of active training time to complete. But in the latter case, you can take a few minutes rest between each Poseidon or even spread them over the day. With the big ones you tend to keep breaks at their minimum to avoid training your completion time.
To put it differently, this time Hell Week didn't simply feel like I had to train every day. It felt like going through Hell Days for 7 days in a row.

If you are new to Freeletics and read this, before you run away screaming, please keep in mind that difficulty is progressive. I doubt that the Coach would have assigned me such a long training schedule if it took me an hour and a half to complete 1 Kronos.

I'm not complaining about the difficulty. This was a great challenge. A tiring week, but good for motivation and self-confidence. It showed me that I could withstand much more than what I thought (on my own I would never have tried combining Kronos with anything else!).
The only downside that I see from such a long week, is well that it takes time, a lot of time... Fitting 5 hours of training in your schedule might be really tough (especially for people travelling or with little flexibility). I was lucky that this popped-up in a normal week, and not one filled with personal/professional commitments.


At the end of the week, there was still 1 question on my mind: why did I get a Hell Week in Week #13? Does it mean that I will get another one in Week #15? 
#confused.



In order to provide enough time to recover after my extended week and in case the last week of the program is another journey through Hell, I decided that week #14 will only be made of 3 training days.