Freeletics: C&S Coach Week 1

I finished my first week of the C&S Coach, and surprisingly I actually found it kind of easy. I'm sure it's mostly because the Coach is still trying to determine my level of fitness, but it's probably also safe to say that I'm starting off with a pretty solid base after having already done five weeks of Freeletics. When it came time to give feedback on how the week went though, I said that the difficulty was just right. I've been hearing some horror stories from the people who said that it was too easy and then got slammed with unbelievably tough sessions in the next week, and I definitely didn't want to experience that. Overall, I had a lot of fun with the first week; it offered up some great workout diversity and it did a good job of demonstrating the new aspects of the program.

The two biggest changes to the Freeletics program are the introduction of different versions for each workout and the addition of mandatory runs. The number of reps and the basic principals remain the same, but all of the workouts now have three versions: endurance, standard, and strength. Endurance uses the modified forms of the exercises to allow the workout to be completed at higher speeds, standard is basically what we're already familiar with, and strength features forms of the exercises that are even harder than doing the standard workouts with a star performance. This is a change that I really like since the added variety makes it easier to progress through the program and to work towards specific goals; the mandatory runs, on the other hand, were not nearly as well thought out.

Many of the Freeletics workouts already included running as a component, but now runs can be assigned by the Coach on their own; this generally ends up being a series of short sprints or a longer endurance run, and usually you'll see one or two of these running-only workouts each week. As a runner though I feel qualified to say that running requires specified training, and without a planned progression to gradually increase mileage over time, it's extremely unlikely to just jump into it without getting injured. My first assigned run was an 8K and that was no problem at all, but I've seen other people with much less experience given a 10K for their first run. While a reasonably fit person can cover that distance with plenty of walking breaks thrown in, it's really not the right way to get into running, and I find it to be an incredibly scary prospect that the running workouts go all the way up to 42K, a literal marathon. Without the ability to opt out of runs completely, or at least the option to limit the distance of these runs, this is going to cause significantly more harm than good.

The Freeletics team has apparently been getting a ton of customer feedback since the new changes came out, so hopefully some of the bigger concerns will be taken care of. I'm fully committed though regardless of what happens, so I'm just ready to begin my second week.

Session 1: Iris (36:43) (*) (PB)

Session 2: Ares (11:31) (*) (PB)

Session 3: Hyperion [endurance 3/5] (5:22) (*) (PB) | Poseidon (7:39) (PB)

Session 4: 8K (59:22) (PB)

   * blue text denotes additional workouts unassigned by the Coach