Tag: Yoga

The Thang

• Wide Leg Hamstring Stretch
• Twisting Torso Stretch
• Split Leg Hamstring Stretch
• Standing Side Stretch
• Sun Salutations (x3)
• Runner’s Stretch
• Crescent Pose
• Warrior 1
• Warrior 2
• Reverse Warrior
• Triangle Pose
• Twisting Triangle Pose
• Right Angle Pose with Grab and Hold
• Chair Pose
• Prayer Twist
• Tree
• Namaste

Moleskin

• Do your backblast on time or you forget who was there and what you did.
• This was the last Yoga session.  We did Yoga every Friday for 8 weeks and I’m not sure I am any more flexible than when we started.  I think my legs are a little stronger, as in I may be able to better handle one of JVs wall sit marathons.
• Fracsac and I did end up with Yoga Butt, which is not as nice as you would think.  Basically it is a tear in the Hamstring tendon.  Not sure what to do about that.

Conditions cool and breezy – 59 degrees

What is up with the cool temps?  I was wearing a long sleeve t-shirt to a May workout.  Nice to see a couple of Uptowner Kotters this morning, Bogey recovering from a torn rotator cuff and Bubba getting back into it after his M’s boot camp.  They were looking for rocks, but I’m sorry…there are two weeks left in the Yoga Challenge.

The Thang

• SSHs IC x 30
• IWs IC x 30
• Squats IC x 20
• Arm Circles IC x 15/15
• Ocho count Body Builders x 10
• Wide Leg Hamstring Stretch
• Twisting Torso Stretch
• Split Leg Hamstring Stretch
• Standing Side Stretch
• Sun Salutations (x3)
• Runner’s Stretch
• Crescent Pose
• Warrior 1
• Warrior 2
• Reverse Warrior
• Triangle Pose
• Right Angle Pose with Grab and Hold
• Chair Pose
• Prayer Twist
• Tree
• Namaste

Thanks,

Hawg

Week #5 of the Uptowner Yoga Challenge.  Prior to The Thang, Walleye diagnosed YHC with a Triangular Fibrocartilage Complex Injury.  He prescribed a Walgreen’s wrist splint and weekly check-ups.  He said it would hurt for a while.  He said I could go see a doctor, but I have learned from Rudy’s example that seeing a doctor should be a last resort.

The Thang

• SSHs IC x 25
• IWs IC x 25
• Windmills IC x 15
• Squats IC x 25
• Wide Leg Hamstring Stretch
• Twisting Torso Stretch
• Split Leg Hamstring Stretch
• Standing Side Stretch
• Sun Salutations (x3)
• Runner’s Stretch
• Crescent Pose
• Warrior 1
• Warrior 2
• Reverse Warrior
• Triangle Pose
• Twisting Triangle Pose
• Right Angle Pose with Grab and Hold
• Chair Pose
• Tree
• Namaste

I’ll start with the Moleskin – As we finished our workout, I noticed a man walking his dog with a ruck on.  I’ve seen this many several times over the past few years.  He is out there every morning with his ruck and two dogs.  Heisenberg and I stopped him to ask him how much weight was in his ruck. He proceeded to tell us of the wonders of “ruck marching”.  He’s been doing if for the past 30 years at the suggestion of the Saints team doctor at the time.  He says he carries 23 pounds and walks 3 miles every day.  He wears the ruck low so that it is uncomfortable (also the Dr.’s suggestion).  He says this makes him work harder.  He is now 67 and is in excellent health.  He doesn’t take any of the medications his friends take and unlike the rest of his family, he has never had back problems.  In fact, he said his current doctor remarked on the strength of his back muscles, wanting to know what type of exercises he does.  It was an inspiring discussion.  As Heisenberg remarked, this is a guy that has been taking the DRP for 30 straight years.  Every morning, he gets up and rucks 3 miles, even on the holidays like today.  The DRP has benefits.  GRT Baby!

The Thang

• SSHs IC x 25
• IWs IC x 25
• Squats IC x 25
• Windmills IC x 15
• Wide Leg Hamstring Stretch
• Split Leg Hamstring Stretch
• Standing Side Stretch
• Sun Salutations (x3)
• Runner’s Stretch
• Crescent Pose
• Warrior 1
• Warrior 2
• Reverse Warrior
• Triangle Pose
• Twisting Triangle Pose
• Right Angle Pose with Grab and Hold
• Namaste

 

Temp was a cool 59 degrees this morning in the foggy Uptowner gloom, so I thought it best to start this session off with some traditional warm-up exercises to get the heart pumping.

The Thang

• SSHs IC x 25
• IWs IC x 20
• Windmills IC x 15
• Wide Leg Hamstring Stretch
• Twisting Torso Stretch
• Split Leg Hamstring Stretch
• Standing Side Stretch
• Sun Salutations (x3)
• Runner’s Stretch
• Crescent Pose
• Warrior 1
• Warrior 2
• Reverse Warrior
• Triangle Pose
• Twisting Triangle Pose
• Chair Pose
• Prayer Twist
• Right Angle Pose with Grab and Hold
• Tree
• Namaste

Moleskin

• Great to see Da Parish recovering well from his ankle injury.  I think this is the first time he and Walleye have seen each other since Walleye left him for dead at City Park. #awkward.
• Triple Shift came with Yoga mat in tow. #HeAintPlayin
• I am becoming more and more impressed with HVACs ability to end his early morning runs at exactly 0530. #punctuality
• HVAC runs after posting also. So how far does run before posting?  I imagine he has been running since last Friday. #UptownerPitStop
• Come support the new Destrehan AO at East Bank Bridge Park.  Kimchi is on Q.  #TroubledWaters

We kicked off the 8 week Yoga Challenge at The Uptowner this morning with 6 men looking to get stronger, more flexible, and injury resistent.  The idea here is to see what happens if we commit to doing power yoga once per week for 2 months.  What kind of changes are we going to see?  Time will tell.  So with that in mind, we started with your basic sit and reach so that we could get a crude baseline measurement of our current flexibility.  Mine was not good.  Feel free to post yours in the comments so that you can look back at the progress.

The Thang

• Wide Leg Hamstring Stretch
• Twisting Torso Stretch
• Split Leg Hamstring Stretch
• Standing Side Stretch
• Sun Salutations (x3)
• Runner’s Stretch
• Crescent Pose
• Warrior 1
• Warrior 2
• Reverse Warrior
• Triangle Pose
• Twisting Triangle Pose
• Chair Pose
• Prayer Twist
• Namaste

Moleskin

• The PAX knew YHC was serious when I showed up in my slippahs.
• My biggest fear was assuaged as HVAC let me know he was all for the Yoga Challenge.  I hadn’t communicated it with him and was worried he would not be excited about it.  He views it as good preparation for the Classic, so I am now even more all in.
• Kimchi started the next cycle in his new “rest on the 70th day,” training plan.  Good to have him back.  Yesterday just wasn’t the same.
• At the encouragment of Bogè, I tried a couple of different voices for the Q.  It was decided that YHC should use the calm, soothing yoga Q voice instead of the normal, bootcamp style Q voice – it was better for our flow.
• YHC has misplaced his travel speaker; otherwise, we could have vinyased to the beat.  If I can’t find it for next week, I challenge Bogè to start learning some Enya.
• I got really cold afterwards.  I googled and apparently that can be a thing once you reach a state of transcendentalism; although, chills are usually the result of moving to an unheated cabin in the New England woods.
• I hope JV gets the above joke.  If not he should thoreau his Yale diploma in the trash.

“Better bend than break” – Proverb

Six men (which grew to seven later on) meandered over to the Uptowner AO.  Since Hawg decided to kill us with H8, the Pax thought it would be a good idea to recover with some yoga before the Tough Mudder tomorrow.  Little did they know that yoga is a beast in itself, but it would be a nice change-up to throwing around rocks.  So the DISCLAIMER was given, and then…

The Thang

We did a lot of things that popped into my head.  I gather a lot of my yoga movements from Tony or Shaun T… so this beatdown was a figure-it-out as we go.  YHC stressed the importance of breathing throughout the moves….it is the most important thing!

Started out with some breathing movements, and hamstring/groin stretches.  Hard to explain…you just have to post to FIO.

Plank Work:
High Planks
16x R. Leg Lifts
16x L. Leg Lifts

Sun Salutations:  Progression shown below.

Suppose to look like the girl on the left, but we looked like Sheldon:

We did 3x Salutations (Da Parish showed up during #3), then we did it 6x Salutations and then added on a yoga pose like Warrior 1 (R/L), Warrior 2 (R/L), Reverse Warrior (R/L).  Google if you want to see what it looks like.

Deep Muscle Work:
16x Low, Very Slow Squats (1,2,3,Low Squat,1,2,3,Standing)
On the 16th one, we held it down low…then did:
16x Low Squat Pulses IC

Repeated Deep Muscle Work with a Right Leg Lunge
16x Squats IC
Repeated Deep Muscle Work with a Left Leg Lunge

Ouch!

Plie Stretch: 45 sec on right, 45 sec on left….it’s a wide low squat with same hand on same foot (go ahead…try it!)

Balance Poses:  Held these for about 30ish seconds.
Knee Curls (R/L) – arms holding up your leg, try to touch knee to chest.
Table Tops (R/L) – kinda like a standing superman while balancing on one foot.
Chair Pose – legs together and sit in a chair, arms up to sky

Hip Work: Hands under shoulders, knees under hips….then raise knees off the ground, and do these:

16x Spidermans (R/L)
16x Leg Lifts (R/L)
Went into Childs Pose to recover after each side.

Finished up with some flexibility work. Standard stuff like hamstrings, groins, runners stretches, etc.

Circled up for the COT, where we had the Countoff, Nameorama, and Prayer.

Moleskin

Real men do yoga.  Helps you stay young!

Good luck tomorrow to the Tough Mudder Crew.  Y’all will have a great time!

…..and yes, Kim Chi is still perfect in 2017!

 

At the Uptowner, we are known to not move or go anywhere (sound familiar Audubon Park?) while we lift heavy rocks for our 45 min workout.  After GORUCK Weekend, YHC wanted to slow things down today and get some long term training in (aka Yoga).  Sure, you could workout out doing cardio or weightlifting, but the real magic is working on flexibility during yoga.  So lets get to it:

DISCLAIMER

Started by walking over to a well lit area of grass (approx. 8 yards away)…how else are you going to see what YHC is doing.  For those who know the P90X Yoga routine, this will look familiar:

3x Sun Salutations (a yoga progression shown below)

Then, we did the following positions while doing a sun salutation before each.  We did right leg first, then left:

• Runner’s Pose (R/L)
• Crescent Pose (R/L)
• Warrior 1 (R/L)
• Warrior 2 (R/L)
• Reverse Warrior (R/L)
• Triangle Pose (R/L)
• Twisting Triangle (R/L)
• Chair to Chair Twist (R/L)
• Right-Angle Pose (R/L)
• Warrior 3 to Standing Splits (R/L)

Nature was calling for YHC, so I turned over the Q to Hawg.  He finished with:

• Runner’s Stretch (R/L)
• Warrior 1, 2, 3 Progression (R/L)

Walked back to the flag, and held the COT.  Good stuff, and thanks for letting me lead.

 

“Try everything once, except folk dancing and incest” – Thomas Beecham

Words to live by especially for a young man growing up in Arkansas.  Things got dicey in High School when I was forced to Square Dance with my Football Coach during P.E., but that is a story for another day.  True to good ole’ Tom’s quote, I decided to introduce an all Yoga workout at The Uptowner today.  As awkward as leading a bunch of dudes through Yoga poses might be for 45 minutes, it’s not one of the things restricted by Thomas Beecham’s quote, so I figured we had to try it.

I am not a professional trainer and I am certainly not a Yogi Master.  The only Yoga I have ever done was Yoga X from the original P90X DVDs.  That was probably my favorite (and at the same time most hated) part of P90X, along with the Plyometrics.  I was surprised at how hard it was the first time I did it, but I could tell it was good for me, strength and flexibility wise.

So, in an effort to help the PAX proactively prevent hamstring and back injuries, I channeled my inner Tony Horton and tried my best to remember the first 45 minutes of Yoga X.

The Thang

We grabbed some rocks to use as Yoga blocks, but I don’t think anyone used them.

• Mountain Pose (5 deep breaths)
• Wide Stance Hamstring Stretch
• Split Leg Hamstring Strectch
• Side Stretch
• Sun Salutations x 3
• Series of Asanas (Mission Impossible to Upward Dog to Merkin to Downward Dog, to Pose, and then back to plank)  Poses included:  Runner’s Pose, Crescent Pose, Warrior One, Warrior Two, Reverse Warrior, Triangle Pose, Chair to Prayer Twist, Twisting Triangle Pose, Right angle Pose to Right Angle Pose & Grab.

That was all we had time for.  I purposefully took my time and did not make it to Warrior 3 or Half Moon.  Maybe next time?

Naked Man Moleskin

Fortunately we had an FNG today, but unfortunately his first introduction to F3 was Yoga.  My bad.  Not sure where we go from here.  Maybe it’s worth trying again some day at The Uptowner (assuming people continue to come after this).  If so, our resident Yogi Shorty should Q the next one.  Maybe it becomes wildly popular as our Chi gets right and we decide to start a Yoga only AO (Sculpture Garden seems appropriate).  Or maybe we decide to never mention this day again for as long as we live.

JV says we do not want to mention this to Douille and I whole-heartedly agree.  I doubt he ever looks at a backblast other than the Uptown ones, so we should be good.  When I mentioned that anything is worth trying once, Amnesty reminded us all of how much trouble that philosophy can get you into in New Orleans, especially in the Quarter.  Fortunately we were in Jefferson Parish this mornig, so I carried on.  I definitely need to bring some Yoga Music next time.

Namaste