Tuesday, August 28, 2012

I am not zen enough for yoga

So, yesterday.

Yesterday, I found myself in yoga class.

Let me back up.

I've been getting a little bored by my workouts lately.  To be clear, I work out 10 times a week (twice on MWF, once on the other four days).  MWF, I've been taking bootcamp (though I have decided not to sign back up for September, for reasons I'll discuss later) in the morning and then I put in an hour of cardio in the afternoon.  The other days, it's just an hour of cardio in the afternoon (I also add weights once or twice a week).  All of this cardio is generally on my own, on a machine - I did the treadmill May-July, the elliptical July-August and now I'm switching back to the treadmill (I've never tried the arc trainer - I'm not 100% convinced that it can hold my weight).

7 hours a week of doing the same exercise gets really boring.  Even when I try to switch it up with intervals and whatnot (and watching Paula Deen), it still gets really dull after a week or two.  So the wife and I decided to take some classes.

Hence, yoga.

Yoga was...Intimidating.  Especially because everyone else was wearing flip flops and had their own mat, and I was in my trainers and borrowed a YMCA mat.  My shirt sleeves were too short, so I kept seeing my new batwings (Why hello there, loose skin.  Took you 80 pounds, but there you are!) out of my periphery whenever we did warrior I. 

And lord, downward dog hurts my wrists.  I don't know if I was doing it wrong or if it's because I weigh 233 pounds and my wrists are like, "Girl, you need to lose at least another 30 pounds before you think of putting your body weight on me."  Either way, by the end of it, owie. 

I will say this - parts of it (especially the part where we kept going from downward dog to standing half forward bend) got my heart pumping.  By the end, I was sweating. 

But I'll also say this - I felt pretty ridiculous about a lot of it, especially the part where I was standing with my feet on my hands.  And I'm not sure corpse pose counts as exercise, but I'm *really* good at it.

Tonight?  Body Pump.  I'll keep you posted. 

Now, why have I decided not to sign back up for bootcamp?  1) Even with the employee discount that my wife gets, it costs about $40 total for us to go.  This works out to about $4 per class.  Which doesn't seem like much, except that it adds up quick and I feel like I only get a good workout about 60% of the time.  Last week, for example, I mentioned that we played kickball.  With 7 people in the class.  This meant that the majority of the time was spent standing around waiting to either field or kick the ball.  It wasn't a terribly effective workout, and it made me mad that I got up at 4:45am.  There have been several instances of things like that - where I'm not entirely convinced that I couldn't work harder on my own.  So the wife and I discussed it, and we'll be taking the month of September off to see if we can motivate ourselves to work out harder. 

10 comments:

  1. lol. Yeah. Yoga is not my thing. I was good at the corpse pose though!! ;)

    Sorry bootcamp is a bust. Kickball is not what I would expect when going to a bootcamp workout.

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    1. Bootcamp is not always kickball and relay races, but it is enough of the time that I feel like I could work our harder, ya know?

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  2. It sounds like Body Pump might be just your thing...I hope so.

    Personally, just the name "Boot Camp" would be enough to scare me off from EVER signing up. And Kick Ball comes with too many bad childhood memories. But then I LIKE yoga. :-D

    (I did actually like Body Pump too though, so there is a place in the exercise universe where we could someday meet....lol!!!)

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    1. LOL! To be clear, I didn't dislike yoga. I just think that either 1) I need to gain some coordination skills or 2) lose about 30 more pounds before my wrists and arms will fully support me in some of those poses.

      Kickball isn't so bad (I mean, in terms of childhood memories). Now, dodgeball, *that* is a whole other kettle of fish.

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  3. I will never forget the time we had a yoga class after work...one of our guidance counselors (who was VERY prim and proper) farted so loud during the downard dog. I completely turned into a 10 year old boy who could not stop laughing about the fart. My stomach was sore after that class...from all the laughing I did :)

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    1. Hehehe! I did have a fear of farting in class. Luckily, I didn't get gassy. I did do quite a bit of hysterical laughing, so I was a little concerned about peeing my pants, but I made it through dry.

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  4. Yoga hmmm well I went for awhile and agree with you. I think it is a skinny girl workout. I really liked it, but had some strange visuals of myself. I would think... "not in those pants"... :)

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  5. You know, the yoga thing can be an AMAZING workout. It can also be a loading zone for pretentious lululemon soccer moms. Honestly, I am usually the biggest person in my classes with a bunch of hard bodied headstanding yoga queens. I just go with my own space - the space on your mat is yours. Nobody is looking at what you're wearing or anything else - they're too busy worrying about themselves!! Try it a few more times,maybe -and ask for some modifications with the poses if they are hurting your wrists, like downward dog. Believe it or not, eventually that will become an awesome resting pose like corpse pose- promise!!!

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  6. I have never tried yoga for a lot of the reasons you listed.... I also have really bad ADD and not sure I have the patience lol....

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  7. I have always wanted to try YOGA but I come from a family that tends to fart a lot. My biggest fear would be letting it loose on a very quiet wooden floor.

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