Coach keeps suggesting too much too hard "Beat your PB"s

🇬🇧 English speaking Forum Bugs and technical support
1

Hi there,

my situation: I completed the “Start Strong” journey and now went on with the “Balanced Burn” journey, as it was recommended for my goals.

I really like the Conditioning circuits in this journey, as they’re a bit more challenging but still doable for me. They motivate me and give me a feeling of getting better each training day.

But what I really find annoying in “Balanced Burn” is that the coach gives me a “Beat your PB” training on 2 out of 3 training days a week, which is too often for me. And most of the time, these workouts are at least 1 level too high for me, which my coach should know based on my feedback.

Replacing the session always brings another “Beat your PB” training, it’s never replaced with a Conditioning circuit. And the workouts are not always getting easier or better.

It’s really frustrating and demotivating to tell your coach twice a week that the suggested workouts are too hard. I’d appreciate if the coach would really learn that I’m simply not ready yet for certain workouts.

Is there any possibility to adjust the frequence of “Beat your PB” vs. “Conditioning”? Or something else what could help me?

Thanks in advance for your support and best regards,
Stefan

1 Like
2

I’ll clarify from the start that as to your main question whether you can reduce the number of “Beat my PB sessions” - I am not aware of a way to do it.

As far as I know, the “Beat your PB” workouts are not meant to be more difficult per se. The main difference between ‘Conditioning’ and ‘Beat your PB’ is the speed - the latter should be done at a maximum speed while still performing the movements correctly, but it is not necessarily too difficult. I can easily imagine a conditioning workout that is too difficult. In fact, I am looking at my next Conditioning workout and I think it is not going to be easy.

In what way are “Beat your PB” workouts difficult for you? You feel too exhausted at the end? Or you mean you are not able to go so fast that you could beat your previous PB every time? Or some individual exercises are too difficult?

2 Likes
3

Hi Sofia,
thanks for your feedback.

I know that the “Beat your PB” workouts are not generally meant to be harder than the “Conditioning” workouts. But that’s exactly the problem: in my training journey they are, at least mostly :wink:

Let me give you one example: I have “problems” with abs exercises like situps or bycicle crunches, after 10-15 in a row it’s getting really hard for me to perform them technically correct and clean. Same with burpees or pushups.
And in my after-session coach feedback, I’m always honest about that.
However, in every training week I’m suggested to do the Aphrodite workout, starting with 50 burpees, 50 squats and 50 situps.
This is so far beyond my current limits that I don’t even need to try.

The Aphrodite-workout is probably the most extreme example from my experiences, but also other suggested PB-workouts are beyond my limits, and it’s pretty much the same every week. This is what frustrates me a bit, because I hoped the coach would narrow down my feedback over time to a near-perfect individual training plan.

4

Hi,
my understanding ist that if you can’t do 50 burpees at once, do it in trunks and tell the coach afterwards.

1 Like
5

This is something that seemed to get better for me as time went by. I don’t know if they fixed but I literally use the freeletics icon at the bottom to change the severity of the workout. The thing is instead of reducing the amount done it gives you a complete different workout. It’ll be cool if the feed back actually was being used by the AI coach.

6

Sure, I’d be fine with that if the suggested workout would only be a little above my limits. But honestly, to reach the 50 burpees, 50 squats and 50 situps, I’d be busy for hours doing 5 and break, 5 and break, 5 and break … I don’t think that this is the idea :wink:

7

I don’t have a Freeletics button at the bottom, on what device are you running the app?
I guess you mean the “adjust session” feature and tell the coach to lower the intensity, right? (sorry, I’m using the app in German, don’t know exactly how the options are called in English)

8

Have you tried adapt session button and lowering the difficulty on aphrodite?

Usually that would work.

9

Yes, it works somehow, as it gives me another god-workwout. Sometimes it’s okay, sometimes it’s still too tough. It’s just a pity that the coach seems not to be learning from me constantly rejecting that Aphrodite thing.

And adapting the session never changes the workout-type for me, it always suggests just another god-workout. That’s also a pity, as I have the feeling that Conditioning circles are much better for me.

10

Weight free gain journey is better for you i think.

1 Like
11

Sure, I only do bodyweight exercises without any equipment by now.

12

Yes. I was talking about that feature. But I guess it changed time ago. I didn’t even know they had those options at the bottom screen. It use to be this freeletics icon (if I remember correctly)

13

@s.draber, @roberto.franceschini meant a journey called Weights Free gain. I admit it could be read as a statement :grin:

Weights Free Gain has cardio* and muscle***, so expect lower repetitions.
Balanced Burn has cardio** and muscle**, so expect somewhat higher repetitions.

I too thought that you might be better off switching to a journey with less focus on cardio (journeys with just one * next to the word “cardio”), as the issue seems to be the number of repetitions. I don’t think it is going to have fewer “Beat your PB” sessions though. But yes, it will likely have lower repetitions.

I think your best options are either 1) Switching the journey or 2) Giving it more time. I feel that Coach takes time to adapt to feedback, also in the process you learn new exercises and Coach can offer more variety.

For 1), you might find these descriptions useful. They give an idea of the number of reps, etc.
Bodyweight Training Journeys
Weights Training Journeys

3 Likes
14

Hi there,

I only have experience with Hybrid Strength, but I’ve experimented with many of the controls and I’ve found adjusting the schedule can achieve much.

If you are only scheduled for say 3 times a week spread out, the workouts are long and intense. But if you schedule say 4-5 days consecutively the Coach seems to give you a break and assigns some easy days. (With more variety as well).

I suggest playing around with it and see if you get the results you want.

1 Like
15

@s.draber

Hi!

Each journey has its own specific structure which assign each session to a certain target. With Calorie Burn based on 5 days per week you are going to have:
Day 1 - interval
Day 2 - beat your PB
Day 3 - Running ( if allowed in the options section, otherwise Beat your PB)
Day 4 - conditioning interval
Day 5 - beat your PB
If you chose 4 times per week you won’t have the conditioning day.

When you want to adapt for a lower intensity session coach is going to assign anyway the target of the day, so it will probably be a “beat your BP” session if this is the focus of the day.
Another way you can try to change it is to adapt for a “don’t have much time” option, yet I am not sure it’s going to change your training into an interval one because you are at the very beginning and there are lot of short God workouts available for the beginner.

If your focus is to lose weight I strongly suggest you to continue with this journey, face your demon and do, step by step, that 1/5 Aphrodite : you’ll feel powerful and highly motivated after that, believe me. :wink:

Other journeys, as the mentioned “weight free gain” one, have a different structure and there you can find one more interval session and one less Beat your PB one.
On the other side this is a journey to build muscles, with less reps and less rounds, to be done at a very slow pace. This won’t make you burn lot of calories and you have to follow a diet according to the target if you want to see a great result.

So it all depends on what you goal is. :blush:

Hope this help, have a great day and keep pushing :dizzy:

3 Likes
16

@Sofia

@s.draber, @roberto.franceschini meant a journey called Weights Free gain. I admit it could be read as a statement :grin:

Thanks for the clarification, actually I thought Robertos auto-correction corrected “training” to “gain” or something :smiley:

And also thank you for the detailed explanation and for providing the additional resources, those definitely help me understanding what to expect from the different journeys.
Unfortunately, the documentation (highly) recommends pull-up bars for all muscle*** journeys, which I don’t have. So I don’t know whether it’s a good idea to switch.
But yes, now that I’ve read the documentation, maybe Balanced Burn was not the best choice for my goals.

@Jwebster3073 and @Tanith

Thanks for your explanations about the training schedule. Indeed I have only 3 training days per week and running excluded, which could explain the 2 PBs + 1 interval schedule every week.
Unfortunately I don’t have more time available for training. The only thing I could do is to “trick” the coach: schedule 5 days a week and on my 3 real training days I only pick those I like. But I don’t think that this is the idea of a personalized, virtualized coaching :wink:

@Tanith Is there some documentation available, which journey focuses which training type on which training day, or did you provide this overview based on your experience?

My goal is not loosing weight, but getting fit in general and giving my body a bit of shape. However, the coach recommended Balanced Burn instead of Strength & Stamina or anything else, so I followed the recommendation.
It would be cool to sneak into another journey to see what it has to offer without loosing my current journey progress, but I think it’s not possible, right?

And when I cancel an active journey instead of completing it, will my feedback for the coach (=training-input for the AI) then be lost? Or is it kept for my next journey(s)?

Anyway, thanks to all of you for spending your precious time to help me getting a better Freeletics experience, much appreciated :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

2 Likes
17

@s.draber

There is no shame in it, I do it all the time! Sometimes I need say an upper body workout, I just pull the levers until I get what I need. It all goes into the algorithm memory.

A workout is a workout :man_shrugging:t2:

18

Hi!

You can switch to another journey if you think this is right for you.

Any data of the current journey as well as any feedbacks won’t be lost: coach knows your progresses and it’s going to use it as long as you use the app, whatever journey you are in. :wink:

I provide you the overview based on my own experience and looking to other freeathletes journeys: it’s several years since I started training with FL and I can say I know it quite well :blush:, at least I just write what I am sure of. :wink:

Let us know how your training is going! :muscle:

19

@s.draber I’ll add one other thing. I remember when I got 50 burpees for the first time, I also couldn’t do them in a row, and it took me ages and ages. I would do a few and walk around the apartment, just breathing. I personally didn’t feel like changing. For me it is a bit like a game where I get different challenges, and sometimes they are too hard, sometimes unreasonably hard, but I believe that I am supposed to just try.

Lately I started getting 20x spiderman pushups. At first I did them in chunks of 5 with huge rests in between. Yesterday I did 8-6-6 with shorter rests.

Now I started getting archer pushups. I find them really complex, I can perform exactly 0. I try every time the app suggests it. Last time I filmed myself. It looks completely wrong :smiling_face_with_tear: I don’t know how soon I’ll manage to perform one correctly but I told myself that I will never do one if I don’t try it from time to time.

I know you said you don’t have time to do 5 hours of burpees… but maybe try to do as long as you can afford, even if it means going to the kitchen to get a refill of water or something after every 5 :sweat_smile: Changing the journey is also an option. But I think similarly difficult sessions might pop up again as you continue progressing

7 Likes
20

@Jwebster3073 @Tanith @Sofia
Thanks again for all your hints and feedback, actually this is quite motivating :muscle:

I think now I got all the options I need to either force the coach to give me a workout with a better fit or to just take the challenge and try it!

This week, the coach planned a 1/3 Dione and I finished it :partying_face:
Last week I wouldn’t have even thought about it :smiley:

5 Likes