Freeletics Week 2

Motivation city this week!

Firstly when I clicked on the coach to move into week two it covered the fact that I had only done a couple of pullups in each session last week and said it was quite normal to do only one or two. Plus I have seen some others on you tube that struggle with a couple so I don't feel as de-motivated as I ended on last week.

I've just started writing this after the first workout which was Aphrodite again and I smashed my last time which was 47mins and got a PB of 34 minutes. Last week was much harder so I am guessing it has kick started my metabolism  that and the banana I had about an hour before I started the workout helped! Day 1 done and feeling great.

Day 2
Situp MAX *83
Metis 09:09

Pretty amazed I could do that many situps considering I was still a little sore from Aphrodite. As for Metis, on paper, as do most, Metis looks pretty easy but it is far from it. Really made me sweat and work for it even though there is less to do than Aphrodite it's just as exhausting and an absolute killer on your legs!

Day 3
Aphrodite again and once again managed to get a PB with 31:15 which was over 3 minutes faster than last time. I can see the next one i'll be watching the clock to get sub 30minutes, can only imagine how good that is going to feel.

Day 4
Situp MAX *94
Metis 09:06

Week 2 over...
I've noticed that I have started to sweat more now that my body has got used to exercise once more. Don't be alarmed if you are like me and sit at a desk all day and the first time you do some strenuous exercise you are absolutely shattered, gasping for breath and not sweating at all. Your body needs to learn to sweat again, there is a scientific explanation for it but I can't for the life of me remember what it is called.

Anyhow, that's me just finished the Metis, sweating profusely and looking forward to chopping some wood up for the fire and messing around with the dogs. Admittedly I feel like I am enjoying the workouts and the additional bonus of seeing the time on screen gives you that extra little push to beat your last time for that exercise.

See you all next week!

Teaching your dog to sit, drop to shot etc.

I decided to put this onto my blog as I am writing it to submit to the club where we train as they asked if anyone would like to write down how they train their dogs to sit. As you can see above, this is my eldest dog Frank while out on a walk being recalled (three pips) and then being sat at distance (one pip).

Training a dog to sit sounds like the most simplest of tasks and probably is, but will become a powerful tool later on in the dogs working life. You may of heard the term “drop to shot” where upon a gun being fired your dog should stop, sit and then mark the bird (watch where it drops). Or you may have seen dogs working out in the field many hundreds of yards from the owner and with one pip of the whistle or on a noisy / windy day just a raised hand, the dog stops, sits and pays attention for it’s next command. These actions and more have a strong link back to the simple act of getting your dog to sit.

Two things to remember throughout all training. Consistency is the key, just because you are late for work doesn’t mean that you can skip the lesson at feeding time in a morning, just because you really need the loo still doesn’t mean you can put the bowl down and leave the dogs to eat. That’s plain lazy. Also commands to carry out a task are always nice command, never feel stressed out because your dog isn’t sitting and start to raise your voice or say sit in a nasty way. If you need to tell them off you should be using something to let them know it’s wrong, I use a short “ah” in a gruff voice.

The basic sit

So first of all let’s look at how to get your dog to sit in the most basic of ways and then move on to each step, evolving the sit so that you can confidently sit your dog at distance.

There are many types of commands to use and first we train the verbal and slightly introduce a visual one. Most dogs don’t have a GCSE in english so you can use whatever word you like, personally I use “sit” however some use “hup”. I find the easiest way to get them to sit is from a young age using feeding time and play time, then it feels natural to them.

Let’s take feeding time as a pup. With the bowl of food in one hand stand up straight and with the palm of your other hand facing them, fingers closed give the command to sit. For an untrained dog this will mean nothing so repeat a couple of times and if your dog is still over excited at the thought of food then put the food on the floor, keeping the dog at arms length, with one hand on it’s chest and one hand on it’s bum push it’s bum to the floor and hold it in the sit position and repeat in a calm voice your command to sit about three or four times. It will take a few weeks to train this into your dog, at which point you should soon be able to get the dog to sit by holding the food in one hand and commanding it to sit.

You could do the same with a toy, hold it in your hand or put it on the ground and repeat until they are sitting correctly. Don’t forget that when they do, praise them. I don’t teach with a clicker or food, just a “good boy” and a pat.

The sit and stay

Now we have a dog that will sit to a verbal command after a few weeks, with and without a temptation in your hand. What you need next it for them to stay on the spot while the bowl or toy is being lowered to the ground and stay that way until the command is given to eat.

This is a simple case of as you are lowering yourself to the ground keep repeating the command word and if needs be a gentle bit of pressure on their chest to hold them back. If they force forward just stand back up. This takes a lot of patience! The first week of doing this with mine resulted in me having to hold them back with a lot of “ah’s”. The length of time they are sat should be different too. This is important so they do not second guess you! The moment you give the command to eat give them praise.

DO NOT say “sit, siiiitttt, stayyy, wait waiiiittt, waiiiiit”. How many commands do you need?! Just a simple single word will do. Sit means sit until you give it another command. Also never get it to sit and then praise it by calling it in, i.e. "come here, good boy", this is teaching it to be unsteady.

Now we should have a dog that when you command it to sit, it sits and should stay there until you tell it to do something albeit in a quiet environment but most importantly if it is a pup it will make the transition into attending gundog class a lot easier as there are more distractions out there.

Finally let’s cover sitting to visual signals and whistles.

The basic structure is the same. Practise it in stages, gradually building up distance and being consistent.

Sit and stay at distance

Firstly we need them to be able to see / hear the command at distance so firstly try walking the dog to heel, as your leading foot hits the ground give the lead a little tug and say sit. Once this has been mastered use the whistle AND the verbal command, give it one short beep on the whistle and by the time your second foot hits the floor as you are standing the dog should be sat.

Along with this while out on a walk also sit your dog, turn to face it, still on the lead, raise your arm high in the air, palm facing away from you, fingers closed and issue the sit command or whistle, even if it is already sat. Reaffirm this and take a step back, if the dog starts to shuffle, put it back on the spot, even if it only a few inches, pip the whistle and step back. Keep repeating this until they are steady and you are at the length of the lead. Now is the time to slip the lead off and get further and further back.

IMPORTANT…. Consistency warning… Always put your dog back on the spot if it moves off, shuffles, crawls and start again.

Praise comes when you get back to the dogs side.

When you are at a distance away, try walking around, don’t just go straight back. Walk behind a tree and out again, bushes are great too but only for short moments. The dog will soon learn that you are coming back. It is also important at this stage that the dog is looking at you. Yes it’s great the dog sit’s 300 yards out and looks like it’s half asleep watching the squirrels in the wood nearby but you really need the dog to pay attention verbally and visually.

To truly get your dog to sit while it is away from you simply let it play around your feet and issue the sit command. If it labours before the sit, tell it off, run over, push its bum to the ground and make it sit. Eventually it will get the message that when you say sit, no matter where you are, you mean it. Increase the distance until you are confident that it will sit at a good distance away. This is where the visual raised hand is powerful as they may not be able to make out what you have said or what the whistle was.

Dropping to shot is then just a matter of introcuding the dog, at a correct age to a starting pistol while carrying out the commands. For mine I train to sit at distance first, then crack a shot off and beep the whistle while holding my hand up. Eventually they realise that a gunshot, raised hand, sit command all mean sit.

Now you can take great pride in your dog that has manners and have a quiet giggle at the 9 year old untrained dogs in the park running around while the owners are screaming commands at them in an attempt at control.

Consistency, consistency, consistency.

Freeletics Week 1

I ache!!!

That about sums up the week.

Day 1. (Wed)

Pushup MAX (27*)

Pullup MAX (2)

Pushup MAX (28*)

As these are all MAX ones it is simply a case of doing as many as possible in 100 seconds of each one. Simple... or so I thought. Pushup's I managed to get to where I thought, Pullups though; absolutely no chance unless I literally jumped up at the bar. So I did two correctly and the rest were me just putting as much strain on my arms as possible. The final pushup's I reached the wall and just couldn't do any more.

After only a few minutes of exercise in total I felt like it wasn't really doing much, although the following day I can feel a little soreness in my chest and while I was doing it I did feel my muscles burning.

Day 2. (Thur)

Burpees MAX (36)

Squats MAX (101*)

The first set had it's own complications, mainly to do with two over excited spaniels which combined with my terrible fitness made it hard to do even 36. Squats not so much of a problem as I managed to maintain good form but slow. Now a few mins after and i'm sweating like a good un and my legs are aching!!! I'm pretty thankful for having the forethought to cut all the logs for tonight and tomorrow morning as the prospect of weilding a 6 pound axe isn't appealing any more. Bath time!.....

Day 3. (Sat)
Basically the same as day one but changed around, two lots of pullups and one set of pushups. Needless to say I did 2 pullups, 30 pushups and 3 pullups. At the end of this one I felt pretty de-motivated as I thought that surely I should be doing more than 2 pullups.

Day 4 (Sun)
Aphrodite Click to view
Now this was bloody hard work and admittedly I got to the middle of the third round and felt like packing it in but I got through it all in 50 minutes! Burpees seem to be a real killer for me which took the longest of all the exercises.

End of week 1....
So I finished week one. I pretty much ache in many places, especially my legs after that last session. Once I had entered my times into the coach section I clicked on "Next Week" and was presented with a few Max's, two Aphrodite's and two Metis's (see here) All in all I have four sessions this week, the first one being Aphrodite!

Considering that the weather for today is clear skies and tomorrow it is raining I've chosen to start tomorrow as I really need to install a new wood burner in the office and spend a few hours chopping wood. The likeliness of be being able to get the most out of a freeletics session when I've been doing that all day is slim.

To sum up, I feel like I have more energy in myself so it was all worth it!

Freeletics ... Time to get fit!

So it's about time I got my ass into gear and stopped making excuses as to why I don't have time to do any exercise! Don't get me wrong, i'm not massive or suffering but I do have a festival to go to in August and I really want to go there feeling good about taking my top off and soaking up some rays.

My previous attempts at keeping fit and healthy have always been a bumpy and resistive start and then when I feel the burn, that's the point I want to carry on.

As I have just moved house and changed lifestyle somewhat I figured that I would try something more natural this time, rather than lifting heavy weights, building big arms and shoulders and moaning about how it takes forever to get rid of stomach fat. So after much hunting around I saw some of the freeletics videos "15 week transformation" and figured I gotta get me some of that, this was back in December....

From then on I managed to find an excuse every day why I couldn't start! Too tired, just eaten something, don't want to be burnt out the following day... the list goes on. I carried on watching the videos, getting a little more inspired day by day, I even started to grow a beard to remind me that I needed to loose weight and sort myself out before August.

Then came my birthday, another year older... Now is as good a time as any to start I thought, after 2 weeks of moving home I signed up and bought the freeletics coach. Yeah I know, you will have heard all the skeptics talking of how it's just the same thing on the site but fed to you through software but I'm no conspiracy theorist and personally for me it serves as a little motivation thinking that I have paid for something and need to get the use out of it.

So....Here's to 15 weeks of freeletics and hopefully a big change in me!

A quick insight into the coach is that it does say that it needs to assess your level of fitness first so you start off by doing Pushup MAX (as many pushups in 100 seconds as you can) followed by Pullup MAX and Pushup MAX again. The following two days are the same and the final day is the Aphrodite session. I'll let you know how I've done on Saturday if I can still type!