flexibility

The Journey: Day 2

Heeeeeey there! Welcome back. When we last left our heroine, she was setting about her day of doing IT stuff and stuff. As we’ve returned today, she’s doing the same thing! Imagine that. It isn’t always interesting, but it pays the bills and the people are nicer than Bob Ross and Mr. Rogers put together.

Let’s jump right into it. Today’s workout is done. Truthfully, something has to be really wrong where I don’t work out. Like an extreme amount of physical pain. I will work out through headaches and cramps and usually feel much better after in both cases, so a little bit of pain doesn’t stop the train. It wasn’t as sweaty as yesterday, but I know I still put in work. This is a whole new concept in working out, for me, anyway. It’s the way I wish I had always known or been taught to work out. Functional fitness is just everything that I need.

One of the things (a pair of things) that I am using to determine how my flexibility, strength, and mobility are changing is squats. The other is side lunges. Neither of these things is a strong point for me, however, I am certainly seeing some progress. Where I never could before, I can now sit all the way down in malasana AND I can stand back up without having to tip forward and use my arms. My squats have been shit for a long time, but I’m finally getting to a point of getting parallel to the floor without issue. Baby steps, ya know? Those side lunges? Hated them. Still do, but now a little less. Glute meds are opening up and I’ve gotta be breaking up some scar tissue around my hip.

I know you’ve been dying to hear about today’s shake. Well, wait no longer! It was, dare I say, tasty? First off, even though the instructions say use 8 to 12 ounces of water/milk, I didn’t do that yesterday. Then my shake was thick and gross and so whey forward that I scooped it like melted ice cream (but it wasn’t quite that satisfying). Today, I wised up and actually followed the instructions and whaddya know, not too bad. Now, truly, can you ever go wrong with the combination of peaches and crystallized ginger? I think not. Calling the shake a win today. The right amount of liquid plus fruit plus spice equals a tasty drink.

As I mentioned yesterday, mood and cravings are on the tracker. Again, not feeling really any different as far as mood. I have thought of something to be consciously aware of as far as mood goes, though, so I’ll keep an eye on that. No, I’m not telling you here because you don’t need to know every damn thing about my life. I mean, seriously. But seriously seriously, there are like 4 people reading this, so I could tell you where I buried all the bodies and no one would be the wiser.

DISCLAIMER: I HAVE NOT HIDDEN ANY BODIES ANYWHERE!! OMG

While the shake is supposed to curb cravings, last night I wanted something sweet from out of nowhere. We didn’t have anything so I didn’t eat anything, but I thought that was something of note. It wasn’t a level 10 get me cake or die craving, more like a level 2 passing thought of some cake would be nice. I can handle that.

ENERGIA!! (That is only funny if we worked together in Ixtapa…boobies boobies) Yup, plenty of energy. Possibly too much. It wasn’t the best night of sleep, but I’m going to go ahead and blame that on the storms that rolled in and stuck around a while. Somewhere in the middle of the night, there was thunder so loud it woke both of us up. Now, to wake Lovey up doesn’t take much, but I sleep through everything. Not that thunder. I wake up with plenty of energy and the levels stay high throughout the day unless I smoke my face off. Then I’ll be a little tired before 9, lol. But I’ll also be uber-relaxed. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have us smoking weed on the couch. (Legally. If you’re so uptight. I have a medical card for my state.)

What’s left? Everyone’s favorite topic! Poop! I’m such a good pooper. That’s what I thought until this morning when I went to the well and the well didn’t produce much. Huh. Oh well. HAHA. Sometimes it just takes a workout to get things moving and move they did so again I’ll check the box for regularity. Smooth.

Legit other things happen in my life and maybe one day I’ll get back to writing about those too. Who knows. But until tomorrow, drink your water, say your prayers, know your role and SHUT YOUR MOUTH! Jabroni.

Summer Polestice

Ok, ok, so I’m a few days late with it. On the actual summer polestice, I was shoving bacon down my piehole like there was no tomorrow. There was so much tasty stuff at the Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival that, at times, it was difficult to make choices since I couldn’t eat everything. I did find that since I’ve been trying to eat better, greasy items were not appetizing to me. One bite and I either didn’t want any more or I wanted to spit it out. I mean, it’s bacon, it certainly can be greasy, but it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes being healthy is no fun.

On the topic of pole, an item that has been on the bucket list that I don’t really have is to submit for a competition. I did it, since now I can attempt to play with the big kids, aka the Master’s division, aka the over 40s. I won’t know for another couple of weeks if I’m actually going to be in the competition. Like some other folks I know, and probably some I don’t, I go back and forth between ‘I hope and get in’ and ‘OMG what did I do, please gawd no!’ These two sides are fighting it out on a near daily basis in my head. The yes side has a song picked out; the no side is thinking about how much more trapeze I can do. The yes side keeps me stretching and doing cardio; the no side said ‘have a cinnamon roll’. So I’ll keep fighting it out internally for a few weeks until one side wins, and by wins, I mean I get an email saying I’m in or I’m not (assuming you get ‘hey, you suck’ emails, lol).

Footnote: I’m certain that no one will get an email saying, hey you suck. I’m just goofing. There may be letters of ‘not this year, try again next year’ or something else that will soften the blow. The pole world is really supportive and encouraging.

Having been off the pole for a while, I’m making my way back to some semi-advanced tricks. Stuff that was escaping me in my previous pole life. I had the absolute toughest time getting into Superman then. The first time I needed to do it recently, boom, there it was like it hadn’t been the bane of my existence for a long time. Imagine that. Other fun stuff I learned that I can do include sitting up out of both an iguana mount and a brass monkey, fun shoulder mount holds, shoulder mount to brass monkey(!), and handstand press-ups with both hands on the floor and with one on the floor, one on the pole. These things are exciting to me and make me wonder what else I can get my body to do. Russian split? Maybe. I mean, I understand the positioning, it’s just a matter of whether or not my legs are going to cooperate. I think with the stretching on the regular, I might just get there, torn labrum be damned.

I’m keeping it realistic here and I’m completely open and prepared for the no option to be a reality. With that in mind, I’m thinking about what, if anything, I want to accomplish at the rig this year. I really should work on returning to the board and not being such a chickenshit. It would help me in being lazy and not having to climb the ladder so damn much. I need to solidify my split and maybe see if a whip can be in my arsenal. My layout is in a fairly sweet spot, so I guess I should start taking it across. Hell, I should start taking any/everything across since I haven’t done any of that since at least last season. Perhaps some twisty or flippy tricks will show themselves this year. Could this be the year the forward over returns? Duhn, duhn DUHN!!! If I could whip, I could flexus, right? Yes, right. Only positive vibes. Let’s see how much of this positivity I have tomorrow morning after T25 (I hate you, cardio, but I love you because you’re the only thing that makes me skinny) and yoga. Positive thoughts, y’all!

These are my not-so-random thoughts this fine Tuesday morning. Those plus ‘write a damn book already!’ are my thoughts. Baby steps will get me there. Wish me luck. See you tomorrow…maybe.

Insert Techno Beat Here

Move – slowly out of bed
Shake – the headache I woke up with
Drop – it like it’s hot

This morning was a tough one indeed. Don’t you just hate when you wake up with a headache? I do and I did. Luckily there were no weights involved in this morning’s workout. I actually skipped the assigned P90X for the day so I could do my new DVD. I heard about it through a 90 day splits challenge group to which I belong. It’s called Fit & Bendy and it’s by Kristina Nekyia, who is trained in all kinds of flexy stuff.

The DVD goes for approximately an hour and is broken up into 6 sections, I think.  It’s been several hours ago. First there’s an all-over warmup, followed by a splits warmup, stretching for splits, shoulder/back warmup, backbend work, and a cool down. I was familiar with all of the stretches in the video, however, each of them had its own little tweak that made it new. Mostly the new stuff involved PNF.

Realistically speaking, the all-over warmup isn’t enough of a warmup for me personally. I think I need to put in a half hour of cardio or something to that effect before I really feel warm enough to get a good stretch going. I would imagine that most folks would need a little more, but on the first time out, you live and learn. I’m not going to go through every single thing in the video, but there are hamstring, quad, and groin stretches in the splits part, working for both front and center splits as well as upper and lower back stretches in the backbend section.

At the end of the video, I was tired. Granted, it was also 6:30 in the morning and I was fighting a headache, but it’s more than just stretching and less than a full-on workout. The best part of it all didn’t happen until about 2.5 hours later when my body felt GREAT! I really and truly felt as though I was taller and just had better overall movement.

Let’s take an inventory by memory of the current list of items in the stretching arsenal:

·        Fit and Bendy DVD

·        Cleo the Hurricane DVD (Which I don’t use because I don’t find it to be safe for my body)

·        Valentino Brothers DVD (front split, side split, general stretching)

·        P90X (1,2,and 3) DVD (there’s some sort of stretching in each of those)

·        Foam roller

·        Lacrosse ball

·        Maxi-Flex stretching band (ha, go look that up)

·        Daily glucosamine/chondroitin (yummy fish oil burps)

With all of these things, one might imagine that I will certainly get that MF split soon. At least I better.

Porky Pig just popped out of a cartoon window and I second what he said.  That’s all folks!

ROCO Friday- In My PJs

Good Friday morning to the flock. Let the congregation say, ROCO! And not just any ROCO, it’s work from home ROCO. It’s I’ll be in my pajamas nearly all day ROCO. Yeah, that’s right, I came down the stairs in those mofos. It is almost the weekend! And the congregation says, ROCO!

I kid you not, this day is an integral part of my week. At least two days I week, I want nothing more than to be able to wear something super comfortable and instead I have to put on work clothes. Today, I wear what I want if anything at all. These are good times. They aren’t quite the best of times. That video is for another day. Maybe when I’m on vacation in 93 days.

Yes, I have a countdown happening. It’s on my whiteboard as a reminder not to slack off on working out for 90 days starting on Monday. Three straight months of getting it in will have me body-ready by then. It’ll also serve as a base for the strength I need to gain if I’m thinking about participating in the Colorado Pole Championship this year. The hardest part about the whole concept is that I need to prepare possibly two routines, supposing that I am accepted.

I lean towards going forward with this as I’ve been saying for some time that in year 40, I would do this. I’m still not 100% on board, but the wonderful feedback and support I got yesterday from just mentioning the though pushed me from 50% to at least 75%. 🙂  A big part of, well, everything, is flexibility and my lack of it. It’s something that I would REALLY have to work on along with strength. That full front split isn’t a requirement or anything, but there’s also so much more to flexibility than that. I need to work that upper back and shoulder shit too. Ohhh, the work involved to participate. Yes, participate, not compete. I want this to remain fun. It’s like a showcase but just on a bigger stage. I’m not going to think about winning or losing or placing or competition at all. I just want this performance to be better than my last one. Yep. That’s my goal.

It’s also my goal to get through this day of work successfully and that means getting to it. Have yourself a great Friday and never forget, ROCO!

I Really Wanna Know

Good morning, boys and girls! And how are we this fine Tuesday morning? If you’re like me, you’re tired and sore but quite ok with it. Muscles get less sore, but memories, when I write them down, last forever. Oh, lest I forget, skeletons can be talked right out of their closets, so be careful.

Last night, I ventured back in to a studio for a workshop. Although I had never been to said studio for a class previously, the pole world remains relatively small, so that in a class of about 10, I knew over half of the folks in attendance. While the workshop wasn’t a stretching workshop (I could really use one of those…weekly), the stretching portion was what I enjoyed the most. I’m not saying that I didn’t enjoy the pole portion of it, just that we could’ve stretched for another 45 minutes and I wouldn’t have been upset. As far as the actual pole work goes, I had some hits and some misses, as usual. Some items easier than others as I had done them before or strange body shapes come naturally to me, some items were all “aww hell no” because I have absolutely zero elbow conditioning left.

Anywho, the studio sit inside of a larger recreational class taking type of place and last night (could be every night, I don’t know), they were playing late 80s/early 90s music as I was leaving. A couple of guys were doing the Kid ‘N Play without putting much effort into it. I couldn’t just let that slide so I told them that they needed more knees and proceeded to demonstrate. People are so easily amused. Meanwhile, as I’m rocking it out, I duck a hockey check from my around the corner neighbor and dance my way out the door. It probably says something about my silly life when I’m dancing and just duck something like that and keep on trucking. The duck came naturally, checking to see who threw the check was an afterthought. I’m weird.

I’m nearly out the door and there is a girl next to me who was also in the workshop. She looks at me a little funny and says, “I’m Lisa (not really), I’ve never seen you here before, but everyone knows you. Who are you?” Easily the best line of the night. I am Mysterion. Or Token. More like Token here in Colorado. Tokenion. Ha, that goes with Colorado too. I’m a legend in my own mind.

You know that whilst I chat with you, I’m making love to this lacrosse ball. Yep. If making love means rolling around on top of it until I find just the right spot then laying on it until the feeling goes away, yeah, that’s what I’m doing. My muscles are set on random, I swear it. One big shuffle of pain. This is the price I pay for really never having stretched. I know it’s never too late and all, especially since I AM GOING TO GET THIS SPLIT, but it would’ve been much easier had I been a flexy kid. <Chef voice> Learn from my mistakes, children!

Have you ever gotten into child’s pose with a soft, warm blanket wrapped around you and just didn’t want to get up? Possibly even go to sleep like that? Yeah, that’s where I am right now.

No rest for the wicked, I suppose. Workshop yesterday, Zumba today, boxing on Thursday, and thankfully, chiropractor on Friday to try to fix all of the things I’ve banged up since last time. I am definitely not going to be one of those go quietly, reflect on life kinda people. Back in the day, Dr. Demento played a song that summed up how I’m currently running things: I want a death by misadventure. Wanna die face down in someone’s pool. Morbid, but silly too. For now, I’ve got to be off to another misadventure. That one called spinach and egg whites. I’m so EXCITING!

Go out and have a misadventure today. Just don’t die doing it.

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