Every Free Athlete worth their salt knows (and dreads) their Hell Week. At the end of your Training Journey, it's your competition and your chance to prove yourself. After completing your Journey, we want you to focus on going all – out to reach a new personal best. And this is now the sole purpose of the Hell Week.
Does it really feel like hell?
This important event in your training calendar is no longer just about destroying yourself during every training session. Of course, by the end of your Hell Week you will still be extremely exhausted. But the structure of your training sessions during these days has changed considerably.
Think competition, not complete destruction
Take an Olympic sprinter, for example. During the Olympics, or any other championship, they focus solely on outperforming at the few events they have trained for all year. We want you to do the same. To reach your maximum personal performance.
Let’s talk some specifics
Hell Week itself is seven days – seven full God workouts. Seven opportunities for you to fire out new personal bests and set new records. During this week you should focus solely on giving it your all to perform the God workouts. By the end of the week you will be exhausted. Be sure of that.
You might notice that the training weeks before and after Hell Week are lower in volume. To answer your question, yes, it’s supposed to be like this. Before Hell Week, we want to best prepare you for your “competition”. By lowering your volume of training, but keeping the training intensity high, you are already preparing your body. The week after Hell Week is a deloading week. It serves as time to recover from the competition. We encourage you to do some recreational activity to help your body recover from the intense load. Cycle, swim, go for a walk: anything that keeps you moving, without pushing your body to its limits. So the prescription from the coach in the deloading week is again very mild.
Sometimes you have to go through hell to get to heaven. And the best way to discover your capabilities, is to constantly challenge yourself in every way. Give it your all and you will be rewarded.
