RC/PE6 Hardcore, 60 sec Holds in week 10

Fede HD said:

This is evil. While I'm doing this I keep thinking "Why am I doing this?" Ahah now at 4x42" and started 1 week ago, next session I hope to achieve this time without crying. Anyway it's all about your mind and how willing you are to suffer. I think I'm training my mind, not my muscles.

Starting at 4*42 is already impressive. Some people struggle for months with this element. 

i'm on mastery week for 5x60s, i just did 60,50,45,45,40. next week is deload, but i wanna try to get the missing seconds in this week(rest pe's is deload, but my arms feel fresh)

first set is quite easy, but the following is mindblowing, haha.

my pull up bar is making it harder, too - i just can use it from one side, other one is the doorframe to far away to get my head high about it, but in the direction i am holding, the bar wants to turn itself, its bolted, but thats really fantastic to make this exercise even harder

I'm on week 11 and did 5x60s on Monday and feel totally battered. Normally I would then repeat on Friday to confirm mastery but I think I'll wait til Saturday to stand a chance of matching it. That's my compromise with myself. If I flunk it on the second go after an extra rest day (H1 notwithstanding) then there is no way I mastered it.

saschali1979 said:

...on the long run i will lose the endurance for that exercise anyway...
...this is the first exercise i skipped. what do you think? skipped is skipped, of course.

 

Honestly, I considered skipping it a few times (normally halfway through the last set!). After all, only I would know right? And I could probably convince myself of a good reason for doing so, but I realised that the only real reason would be because I couldn't do it. I'd have given up because it was too hard and gone onto an exercise that I found easier (looking ahead, I can probably get through to PE11 before I hit my next bottleneck) - and for what? To get onto some cooler looking exercises? To validate my desire for progress? So I could puff my chest up a little higher when I look in the mirror?

I don't mean to criticise and I'm not suggesting that is the same for you - we all have our own goals here and if you can meet yours without that last 15s then I think that's none of my business, but in my experience of it (a golden period of competitive duathlon through my early twenties lost to apathy), quitting/skipping is seductive and contagious. It becomes more attractive once you've done it and starts to infect everything else you do.

maybe you are right. anyway, thanks for your comment.

as i said, the first exercise i left without mastery. still have one set in my warm up twice a week. will keep it and work on holding it for longer time every month. now at 90 sec. Just try to stay in the flow.

saschali1979 said:

maybe you are right. anyway, thanks for your comment.

as i said, the first exercise i left without mastery. still have one set in my warm up twice a week. will keep it and work on holding it for longer time every month. now at 90 sec. Just try to stay in the flow.

Fair enough! Right now the idea of doing that for 90 sec even just once makes me feel very old indeed. I can just see the timer -  89... 88... 87... that would feel like a lifetime! 

I've repeated the last 3 weeks of the cycle at least 3 times now.  I'm really having trouble getting this.  I can hold one set for 60 seconds, but after that, I deteriorate rapidly.  I'm really struggling with the recovery.  This week I'm doing 4x48s and I can do 48 seconds for the first 3 sets, then I can only manage somewhere between 40 and 45s.

I went back and looked, and I've been repeating the last microcycle for three months now!  That surely must indicate something amiss, no?

I should also point out that my best effort has been 48 seconds for 4 sets.

Milkman said:

I should also point out that my best effort has been 48 seconds for 4 sets.

Instead of 12 second increments, you can do 6 seconds for W10 (such as 4x54 seconds), or if that's too hard, 3 second (4x51 seconds).  Even 1 second increment is progress (4x49 seconds)

For this one I stopped repeating the microcycle and just kept stacking up time. Even a second improvement is improvement.

It took me four months to get it nailed in, incidentally.

Hey guys make sure there is no rest in between. In mastery level you can't rest! I just failed because of it! it's Exercise then mobilisation, then exercise again and mobilisation, and again. No rest! Otherwise you fail!

I think that no rest is understood.  This, of course, is what makes this so difficult.  I'm not even sure how realistic it is for me.