Day 49 - Rest Day & Week 7 Analysis

The workout has finally begun!  I've been complaining for the past few weeks about the falling duration and calorie burn, but this week things got turned back up to 11.  I did six full Asylum/Asylum 2 workouts (two in one session) along with the normal relief and a round of Insanity's Max Recovery.

I should be feeling pretty good about completing that lot, but I feel that I didn't really push myself again.  Let's take a look at the data and figure out why.

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.

Firstly, lets look at the last seven weeks of this Hybrid.  We'll start with the total duration;

Just over 7 hours of workouts in 6 days - Not too shabby!  If nothing else, it's been the longest workout week of the programme.

Now we look at the calorie burn;

 

A 5302 calorie burn for this week again isn't bad, but that week 2 record of 5443 was just out of reach!

You can probably guess where this is going.  Let's look at those two graphs combined anyway;

 

Yup - Week 2 still takes the crown!  It also surprises me just how close last week's recovery week is to this week - they felt incredibly different, but the pace was very similar.

What can I say about this week?  It felt harder, but I feel like I could have done better.  Week 2's data shows that I'm capable of pushing harder over a similar duration, so why didn't I?

If we look at week 2 vs week 7, we see many similar workouts - Strength matches Upper Elite, Game Day matches Speed & Agility, but the two Insanity workout days in week 2 is where I think the difference could be.

If we look at how this week compares to the standalones, hopefully you'll see what I'm getting at.  As we've now run out of Asylum/Asylum 2 data, I'll be comparing this week to an average week in Insanity/Asylum/Asylum 2;

Insanity just kicks butt at burning calories.

It's not hugely surprising then that a week including a few Insanity workouts would have a higher calorie burn than one without.   So if I'm not burning calories with high intensity cardio, then am I building muscle with strength and power?  That's pretty hard to gauge, but maybe tomorrow's weigh-in and measure will show some improvement.

In summary, this week was looong, and a lot of work.  I feel I could have burned a few more calories if I'd either pushed harder, or paced myself better, but I'm not hugely disappointed.

Next week, I get to do all this again.  Yay!