Day 4 – My Nemesis the Crane

Yoga – I feel cyclobenzaprene in my future.

Like Ahabs White Whale, Tom’s Gerry, Wylie Coyote’s Road Runner, Yoga for me is my nemesis. My flexibility resembles someone in a full body cast, my balance, while not bad in itself has never been coupled with said flexibility and I am expecting an unhappy meeting of the two. I am expecting, in fact, to feel like a bad drunk during a sobriety test.

Today, even my eyeballs hurt. However, I think in the past I would have been in bed today with my back out, so the fact that I am heading to work, albeit at a very slow pace, is a great sign. Oh, and my gymnastics girls are going to suffer for this next year when it comes to conditioning in September… Plyometrics comes to town!

It has been a very long time since I had this overall hit-by-a-truck feeling. I remember feeling this way after rugby games in my youth, of course there was always copious amounts of beer to make it go away back then. I am hoping that todays yoga will give me a little focus, a dash of peace to go in my pain stew.

10pm.. So much for that.

Like I have said, I read some P90X blogs as I prepared to start this process and most if not all of them found Yoga the biggest challenge. What they fail to tell you is that Yoga X comes in 3 parts, 30 minutes each. I wasn’t aware of this so by around the 20 minute mark after 864 runner’s poses I was about ready to call it a day. Not to mention the fact that I can’t even get into runners pose from plank without a great deal of effort and a little help from my arms. Somehow my leg gets trapped underneath me and I can’t swing it all the way to my hands. I have every confidence that this will change as time goes on but for now I felt like a hippo playing twister. The first 30 minutes were extraordinarily difficult and the seemingly endless up and down dogs, the thousands of planks and the invitation by Tony (who by the way is in fact Satan himself) to do pushups in between each move was almost enough to make me quit. I believed it couldn’t all be like that so I soldiered on and was rewarded by a ray of sunshine known as the balance flow. Within moments I went from a deep seated hatred of Yoga that seeped from every quivering fiber of each cell of my body, to an awareness that there was going to be something I could actually do! The balance sequences were tough, I admit, but nothing like the first 30 minutes. My heart rate slowed, I was able to focus on breathing and balance and found it quite peaceful. I even managed a 5 second crane although I am sure my wrists will never forgive me.

The third section of the DVD is stretching, something which I need immensely but have to be extremely careful of due to my back surgery. I made it through, completing most of the moves and experiencing some eye opening degrees of flexibility (at least for me). If you watch the DVD you will see some ridiculous movements, things that I am sure are not even legal in some of the Southern States. I am sure I will always have a secret admiration for people who can do those kinds of things while knowing that it is most likely far from my grasp.

I came to an interesting realization while attempting some of the flexibility / grab moves and that is that I have managed over the years to build my upper body to the point where I can no longer touch parts of my body I should be able to. I’d actually like to touch those parts again some day and it’s kind of creepy that a guy called Tony is going to help me.