Freeletics: Basic Package Week 1

After signing up, the Freeletics workouts are available to you right from the start (all of them if you buy the app, and a small selection of them if you don't), but without paying a fee for a structured program, you're pretty much left on your own when it comes to scheduling the various routines. However, with your registration you are automatically enrolled in the Basic Package, a free trial that provides a list of workouts for the upcoming week. The current iteration of the Basic Package only supplies three weeks worth of instruction, but an older plan, which can be found by doing a little searching, consists of a full five weeks.

While the three week program would have been delivered right to my inbox and easier in terms of committing to it, I chose to go with the five week program since the timing coincides perfectly with when I have to return to school for work. Between maintaining a run streak and either attending or instructing group exercise classes though, it was tough to decide where to schedule in these additional workouts to allow for adequate recovery. Ultimately, I ended up opting for doing Freeletics on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, but the program specifically states to do the workouts whenever works best for you, as long as you get them all in for the week.

Each day that you are supposed to work out is called a session, and the first week of the Freeletics Basic Package consists of four sessions of a workout called Aphrodite. She may be the Greek goddess of love, but there isn't a whole lot to actually love about this workout that consists of five rounds of burpees, squats, and sit-ups. The first round requires 50 reps of each of the three exercises, and each subsequent round decreases the number of reps by ten, leaving you with 40 reps in the second round, 30 reps in the third, 20 reps in the fourth, and 10 reps in the fifth. All of this is against the clock for the best time possible, and by the end of it you will have done 150 burpees, 150 squats, and 150 sit-ups.

A: Burpees | B: Sit-Ups | C: Squats

I thought that I was a reasonably fit individual, but my first session of Aphrodite was pretty brutal. The burpees, in particular, were a real killer; while I could knock out about ten of them at the start of each round, afterwards I was reduced to doing five at a time before taking a break until the round was complete. The sit-ups were much more manageable, but I couldn't do them very quickly, and when it came to the squats, I was definitely in my element, but the workout was just so long that even those started to get tough towards the later rounds.

With the initial fear of not knowing whether or not I could actually finish a full Aphrodite eliminated after doing it for the first time, I was able to improve each time I did the workout. By the fourth and final session of the week, my new personal best for Aphrodite was 30:49, over 11 minutes faster than my first attempt at the workout. I'm also proud to say that I completed all four sessions with a star performance, an award that denotes that every single rep of each exercise in a workout was completed with perfect, unmodified form.

Between the Freeletics workouts and the classes I do at the gym, I'm very content to only have to run over the next two days, but at the same time, I'm definitely looking forward to Week 2.

Session 1: Aphrodite (41:56) (*) (PB)

Session 2: Aphrodite (34:57) (*) (PB)

Session 3: Aphrodite (32:46) (*) (PB)

Session 4: Aphrodite (30:49) (*) (PB)