Exercise Fun

Ever since I can remember I ran around.  I've always been an active person who made every movement an exercise in movementism, er movementee?  Anyway, I did every sport I could all the way through school and the only one that I could never do officially was Football due to a mother's intuition/"oh my god my kid is gonna die."

The other day I talked about my conversion to Yoga and how it has really helped me work on my main weakness in regards to physicality, my flexibility.  I've always been pretty flexible since I'm a dancer and a track runner.  I used to do the hurdles, long jump, almost every sprinting event and once in a while an 800 and one time in High School I had to run the mile.  It was a "run" in technical terms only.

The idea of muscle confusion or cross training has always been something I've done even as a kid without knowing those technical terms.  I always changed up my workouts and my playtime with running, dancing, weights, throwing, chasing, ya know the basics.  As an adult in college I had four or five full hour routines that I would run through.  I worked out every day right after work and I would go through my routines of half cardio, half lifting randomly depending on what machines were available and what music was playing.

I've started doing three classes per week with two Yoga classes and one Step class.  The Step class is interesting because there is a group of regulars, who shall be henceforth referred to as "the cool kids," and they know the instructor's routine by heart.  The routine is vigorous and quite enjoyable and the cool kids have a call out and call back with the instructor.  I feel like I'm back in my church days with the pastor yelling out this and that while the crowd nodded their heads, fanned their sweating faces and blurted out "Amen," "yeah boys," "What chu talkin bout Willis's," and the ever popular "Arrrgh!."  The cool kids were shouting encouragement to the others in the room, joking with the instructor and using each other's steps in an elaborate dance of stepmania.

I loved it.  This is my third time in this class and now I understand the instructor's calls and his method, his madness and his enthusiasm.  If you have never taken Step, each instructor is different and uses different terms for similar moves.  What one instructor would call "around the world" another might call "Wadda wadda bing bang."  So it takes a bit to get used to each instructor you encounter.  The teacher at this 24 Hour Fitness likes to mess with people.  He gets close to you and makes faces if you are not smiling.  He jumps up and down flapping his arms and makes sounds somewhere between the squawk of a crow and the lowing of an oxen.  It's quite impressive actually since he is doing this while stepping to "Single Ladies" without any sense of irony.

Yoga Dance! (Said in the voice of Dhalsim)

I've been practicing Yoga for about a month now and I'm getting better.  Today a new instructor started at the gym and he was straight to business.  He ran us through a couple of minutes of warm ups that left about thirty percent of the class sweating and then started the actual workout.

One of the most interesting experiences to have is to practice Yoga with different instructors.  Each Yogi brings their own personality and twist to the practice and I have never had two practices that were exactly alike.  I enjoy Vinyasa or Flow Yoga where the poses are held in short bursts and instead flow into other poses quickly like a dance.  I do think that I prefer what I call "power" Yoga better though.

Power Yoga involves many poses held for a great length of time.  There is a logical sequence to the poses, but not much in the way of variety.  The routine is repeated and the poses seem to focus on either upper body, or lower body strength depending on the instructor.  Today the instructor was working our arms in every pose from Warrior One, Warrior Two all the way to Warrior Three (which I have never done before tonight).  I prefer Power Yoga because I can get almost to muscle failure especially in my arms and if you have never experienced true muscle failure you should as long as you do it in a safe, well structured environment.
Yoga to me allows me to finally be silent.  I talk a lot and anyone who knows me knows this very well.  I talk to smooth, soothe and cajole.  I blab to excuse, entice and excite, but when I'm practicing Yoga, I can just be silent and listen to me.  I find a peace there that combined with vigorous exercise gives me such a sense of "everything is okay."  I need that feeling in my life.

Of course, I don't practice everyday, but I do find that any sort of vigorous exercise has that same effect on me.  I've always been an athlete and physicality touches every part of my life some way or the other.  I dance when I'm singing in the shower.  I dance when I'm walking to work (it also doubles as a defense mechanism) and I often give my downstairs neighbors a little bit of the "pound-pound-pound-what-the-hell-are they-doing-up-there" style of techno dancing.

I've gotten better at being sensitive to others and I don't wake up singing at the top of my lungs like a did a few years ago to the delight of my six other roommates I'm sure, but I do still enjoy a good ol fashion physical, musical, spiritual release.  I'm turning towards the simple pleasures more and more as I see the shortness and suddenness of this life.  I want to live every moment and if that's the case, I should supply a soundtrack.