I’m generally really enjoying the dumbbell journey (I’m on my second iteration), but something that really annoys me is that there doesn’t seem to be much progress in increasing the weight used, instead, the reps just get higher. I know that for phase 3 this is kind of the goal, but I thought when I restarted the journey at phase 1 it would change, but I’m still mostly stuck with low weight high rep.
Also, I feel like the max rep number should be much lower. I don’t want to do 20+ reps pretty much ever, and sometimes I’ve had 30+ reps! I’d much rather be increasing the weight used.
I don’t think this is a problem with having enough weights, although it may be depending on how the algorithm for increasing weights works. I’ve been stuck at 2.2kg for AGES now in upper-body work, and then when it moves up to 4kg (my next available weight) it gives me something ridiculous like 2 reps. The only time I’ve had a decent weight progression is when i manually adjusted the weight and then gave feedback on that - which I’m probably going to do work of, it’s just a pain that I have to do that!
The issue is that it seems that firstly, progression through feedback doesn’t seem to be functioning well and it seems to give me a large number of reps with low weight. For example, 48 goblet lunges with 5lbs.
Ok, the first thing that comes to mind is this really is a VERY light weight to be using. It’s essentially a 2 kg Dumbbell. As a reference, we recommend using a minimum weight for dumbbells of 7-12kg for males who are completely new to training
Are you finding this exercise hard at this 5lb weight? I guess not if you are giving feedback to the coach resulting in so many reps.
At very low weights, the coach will really ramp up the number of reps to increase the difficulty of an exercise before progressing to the next weight as often the jump to the next weight can be pretty huge as a percentage. Imagine increasing the weight by 1 kg for a 1kg DB, and then by the same amount for a 10kg DB. Same weight increase, but hugely different when thinking about the increase in workload for each scenario, the first one being an increase of 100%.
If these lower weights are too easy for you, remove them from your settings and start off from recommended weights.
Just wanted to add that I’ve had the same concerns too.
I’ve been using Freeletics now for a couple of years but this is my first iteration of the dumbbell training journey: I just concluding the barbell training journey.
I’m about half way through now and expected it to have gotten a bit more challenging in terms of weight progression. The barbell journey did this quite well.
I’ve started adjusting weights and reps to suit (I also don’t see the point of those 2 rep sets!). Now that I know that others are having the same issue (and it’s not all in my head) I will probably try and push it a bit more.
It’s just a shame though, as avoiding this very process of having to set my own training is what I rely on the Freeletics coach for. And it’s been great on other journeys so far so I hope it can be addressed.
Thanks!
). Now that I know that others are having the same issue (and it’s not all in my head) I will probably try and push it a bit more.