How taxing are F1 workouts?

Hey folks,

As you were starting out, what was your perception as to the volume / work load required?

I'm only 1 week in and starting at PE1 on most movements.  I'm confident I can reach PE2 on the HBP, (just a matter of attempting mastery), but with the other exercises I'm not taxed at the end of a workout and am able to complete everything in about 30min.

Is it a case of stick with it, you don't know what will hit you in a few weeks?

You most likely wont get hit with anything in a few weeks. The workouts are not intended to be rapid pulse-rate, drenched in sweat, staggering out of the gym affairs.

I often feel like I'm not working hard enough because I'm not being really active, but just steadily going through the set of exercises for that session. It's how uncomfortable you feel that is a good indicator of your workout intensity.

I often have that buzzing, fuzzy feeling after a workout, indicating that I have been working pretty hard. I am rarely sore, however. Check my signature, to see where I'm at.

I would also add that you shouldn't take soreness as indicator of how well/hard you trained.

Most of this stuff is isometric work, which by definition doesn't develop DOMS at all.

This basically means that if you're in the "right" PEs (or for a day it just happens you skip the eccentric movement ones), you're almost guaranteed not to feel much the day after, regardless of how hard you trained.

There are periods where I feel F1+H1 days being really demanding, I'm not able to do the last H1 exercises the same way I do when I train them standalone. 30 seconds sets that are usually fine become really uncomfortable around the 15 seconds mark...

Interestingly, I just got a fancy GPS/heart-rate monitor watch this last week and happened to record my HR while doing F7. 

This was a particularly hard session for me as I don't usually do F7, and I happened to be on week 11 for FL/PE4, SL/PE1, HBP/PE2, RC/PE3, and SLS/SE1. I typically don't take breaks between exercises or sets (except for the IMs), but this time I took a minute here or there because I was feeling particularly drained. 

The workout took 1h31min to complete. My average heart rate was 136 bpm, and my peak heart rate was 178 bpm. 

The highest heart rates I got were with push-ups where I would hit the 160s-170s, then FL/PE4 and ABH where I would hit the 160s.

Estimated calories burned for the session were 732 kcal. 

When I was done, I was pretty glad to be finished, and skipped H1 and my stretching session. 

I felt exactly the way you did when I first started F1; give it a month or two. You'll really feel it once you hit weeks 9 to 11, especially if you're at the right PEs for your level (ie. cannot demonstrate mastery on them). At that point, you'll be glad you didn't start adding more elements to your workout. 

Ah I remember the days of thinking F1 was a cake-walk. I have not had an easy workout in months. It's all high reps and high volume where I am at. Almost every set is a killer, particularly HBP, RC, and FL which are all on the same day. The pump is incredible and I'm walking around the rest of the day feeling jacked! But training to failure every session is tough and I cherish respites as they come.

maolu said:

Most of this stuff is isometric work, which by definition doesn't develop DOMS at all.

 

Where did you get this notion? Isometric work absolutely can and does cause DOMS. 

I didn't feel very taxed when I started out and perceived myself as "beyond" the F1 exercises. Some of them I am pretty strong in, but mobility kills me. And a few months into training, I started getting a better feel for the exercises... Then it got really hard. When I started to demand "beautiful form" in the movements and really concentrated on how they should look and feel while really just keeping the pauses for the integrated mobility. It gets very painful.

But I'm more of an explosive type, so once I hit 10-12 reps, I just cave in. That is part of what makes F1 hard, the high volume.

Now I love it and hate it. I know the volume will get me where I want to be, in terms of connective tissue durability. And I now realize that the once so simple-looking exercises are quite demanding when done properly. And I have even started to see a bit of hypertrophy and strength gains from doing what I in hubris thought was too easy. Quite a lot of strength gains actually. F1 is amazing! But horrible.

Joshua Slocum said:

Where did you get this notion? Isometric work absolutely can and does cause DOMS. 

You're right, I'm half wrong:

"The soreness is caused by eccentric exercise, that is, exercise consisting of eccentric (lengthening) contractions of the muscle.

Isometric (static) exercise causes much less soreness, and concentric (shortening) exercise causes none"

I remembered it being "no soreness" instead of "much less soreness", sorry.

In my personal experience I've never felt as much soreness with isometric as with eccentrics, and that'd explain why.

Do you reckon isometric soreness is comparable to eccentric one? (tricky comparison,I know)

I can't think about any case by memory where this would be true.