Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Exercise Diary: You are much more flexible than you think you are...

... if you know how to relax.

We seriously had a yoga crisis today.  At around 2:30pm my lab mate and I were seriously considering skipping yoga today and perhaps moving it to Friday, because we were both sleepy and tired.  But luckily we both got out of this midday slump and managed to get ourselves to the 5:30 class.

I, fortunately, did not get appendicitis from yesterday's run.  And although I felt my legs today, I didn't feel them as much I felt my butt during yoga today.  All that 3-legged dogs and various lunges really made me aware of how effective that 5-minute butt workout was.

As much as I felt strong today I also felt more tired and sweaty.  I think the latter was due to the lack of ventilation during today's class, but the former, I don't know.  I'm not sure if it's because I didn't sleep as much as I probably should and therefore my muscles didn't really recover, or just because I ran and worked on my glutes yesterday and my muscles were still sore.  But I didn't feel like all my poses were effortlessly achieve like I felt last time.  I was still able to do they as strongly as I wanted, but they took more effort.  And I'm not sure why, since I didn't even do that much yesterday any way. Must be the lack of sleep.

So back to the more flexibility with the more relaxed state.  We were doing half pidgins today, and as flexible as I think I was I'm never able to fully rest my butt cheek onto my mat when I'm doing half pidgins, even though I'm able to rest my forehead on the mat and everything.  And I'm sure it also has to do with my increased flexibility with other stretches I did and stuff, but I found that if I just learn to breathe more and relax my shoulders and my entire torso, my thigh could almost completely touch the mat and so was the lower part of my butt.  And it wasn't painful or forced.  The same thing happened on the other leg as well, although the other leg is much less flexible to begin with, much to my pain (literal pain) and frustration.  But we are getting there, with the proper technique and a bit of time.

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