Day 42 - Rest Day & Week 6 Analysis

Reaching the half way mark in this 12 week programme should feel like an accomplishment, but this recovery week has wound things down a bit too much for me.  I'm not convinced that a recovery week was needed at this stage.

When I think about Insanity's recovery week, it made sense (at least the first time I did it anyway).  The first four weeks of Insanity gradually build up in in terms of duration, whilst maintaining a fairly consistent calorie burn per minute;

That meant that the first time you did Insanity, by the end of week 4 you were pretty worn out, and needed a break before stepping up a gear in month 2.

The Hybrid is a very different workout.  Firstly, it's intended for people who have already completed Insanity, Asylum and Asylum 2.  I'm not an elite athlete, but after completing all three of those, I'd consider myself above average in terms of fitness, and after five weeks of the Hybrid, I'm not feeling burnt out.  Secondly, both the duration and intensity of the hybrid has been dropping since week 2.  Even when I pushed extra hard in week 5 (read about that HERE) I still couldn't match the week 3 numbers.  Lastly, and most importantly, compared to the standalone workouts, this Hybrid has really been looking after me.  Weeks 3, 4 & 5 all included at least four rounds of Relief/Recovery - That's two hours of stretching per week on top of the normal cooldown stretches!

So, how did this recovery week compare to the previous 5 weeks?  As per normal, I pulled the data from my Polar H7 Bluetooth 4.0 Heart Rate Sensor and recorded totals for duration and calories burnt.

I won't be looking at the standalone workouts for this analysis, as neither Asylum workouts have a recovery week.  Let's start by looking at the total duration of each of the last six weeks;

That's more than a 100 minute drop compared to the previous four weeks!

Now we look at the calorie burn;

Unsurprisingly, there's a significant drop in calorie burn.

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

Now that's a bit more interesting.  By throwing in a couple of proper workouts, the week's workout intensity hasn't dropped by too much.

How do I summarise this week?  Initially I thought it was just a waste of time, but I clearly got some work done.  I'll know tomorrow after my weigh-in and measurements what affects it has had on me physically.  Mentally, I'm ready to work out, and that's got to be a good thing.  I know I shouldn't look too far forward, but the next few weeks don't look quite so daunting;

Before I started this programme, I looked at the second half, and thought "Holy ####!"  Now I'm thinking "Bring it on!"  Was that the point of this week?

So, I have three weeks of solid Asylum/Asylum 2 ahead of me.  I've done it before, and was fatter then.  I'm rested, and feel like I'm in reasonable physical shape.  This could be fun.

I've just added a "Totals So Far" widget to the top right of my page.  It's just a little table showing what I've done, and how it's affecting my body.  As my chest, arm and leg measurements have not really changed, I won't track those on the widget, but some of those other numbers look pretty good!

Thanks for reading.  I'll leave you with another cool video.  This week it's more humans doing awesome stuff;