Day 28 - Rest Day & Week 4 Analysis

Well that was an interesting week.  It's probably the first time that this felt like a hybrid of Asylum and Insanity.  There was definitely a bias towards Insanity, but the two Asylum workouts stepped things up, kicked my butt, and almost pushed me too far.

I don't blame the workout for my aches and injuries.  It's a DVD.  Nobody is holding a gun to my head and telling me to push myself harder than I should.  Shaun T constantly says to "know your limits" and "stay within your skill level".  I didn't.  Whether it's because I was conscious that my efforts would be published on Youtube, or, as I keep telling my daughters, boys do stupid things just because they are boys, or some combination of those two factors, I did decide to go for it, and ended up with some shoulder/back pain and a couple of disrupted nights sleep.  Hopefully that's my lesson learned, and I'll be more careful next time.

Week 4 felt like a step up from last week (more on that later), but how did it compare to the standalone workouts?  Once again, I pulled the data from my Polar H7 Bluetooth 4.0 Heart Rate Sensor and recorded totals for duration and calories burnt.

Firstly, lets look at the total duration of week 4 of each of the four workouts;

The hybrid is still taking well over six hours per week.  I'm getting used to it, but if you're short on time, then the standalones are probably a better option.

Now we look at the calorie burn for each of the programmes;

What happened?  The hybrid was 99 minutes longer than Insanity, but only burned 129 more calories!  I know there was a lot more stretching, but that's not what I'm used to seeing.

Now if we combine the two graphs to look at the calorie burn per minute;

10.75 calories per minute!  That's now the lowest intensity workout week I've had out of all four workouts this year!  How much of that was down to the workouts, and how much of it was down to me overdoing it is unclear for now.  Next week I get to do the exact same workout schedule again, so I'll wait until next Friday to draw any real conclusions.

Next week will technically be the last week where I can compare the same week in all four workouts.  Both Asylum and Asylum 2 are only 30 day programmes.  What happens after that?  Do the graphs just stop?  I'll probably start comparing each hybrid week to an average Asylum/Asylum2 week (they're all pretty close in intensity),  and see if that looks ok.

Now that I'm a third of the way through the hybrid, how have the last four weeks looked?

Length wise, the last three weeks have been pretty consistent.  Long, but consistent.

Calorie wise, at the moment there seems to be a downward trend.  From a brief Google search into calories burned during long distance running, it seems that two people running the same fixed distance should burn roughly the same number of calories, even if one takes longer than the other.  The key difference between the two people in this scenario is fitness.  A fitter person can cover the race distance in a lot less time, but the calorie burn remains the same.

If we apply that logic here, and assume that I'm getting fitter each week, then if the duration is fixed (which it pretty much is), my calorie burn should decrease each week.  It's an interesting idea, but I'm just one person, with one set of data, so maybe the workouts are just taking their toll on me, and that's why my calorie burn is dropping.

 

But wait!  I do have more data!  I have the other four workouts;

 

To test the hypothesis, we need a workout with a fairly consistent duration.  Asylum 2 looks pretty good.

It's not as extreme, but there is a similar pattern in Asylum 2 as in the Hybrid.  Again, it's too small a data set to draw any conclusions, but it does give me some hope that rather than a sign that either the workout is getting easier, or my body is failing, that instead I'm getting measurably fitter?  That sounds like a positive way to look at the graphs, so I'm going to delude myself with that for now.

I do have another reason to be positive.  Perhaps it was just good lighting, but this morning not only could I see my bottom two ribs on each side, but there was a hint of some upper abs.  There's definitely not enough to post any photos yet, but it's a sign of progress, and hopefully means that in 56 days time I'll have some of those before & after pictures that people like to show in random ads next to exercise equipment.

Again, thanks for reading.  I hope someone finds this interesting.  If you do, please post a comment below, or even better, share it with someone else.

As always, as a reward for making it through all those graphs, here's a random Youtube video.  It made me chuckle;