Sunday, November 7, 2010

Let's talk about yoga

That's yoga Jim, not Yoda, although the force would come in handy these days...

Now, my yogic prowess is questionable at best - I’m about as flexible as the Titanic was. This disabling lack of limberness is all the more disappointing as it’s not exactly the most taxing of activities. As a male, I can grudgingly accept that I’m not as good a F1 driver as Fernando Alonso, soccer player as Wayne Rooney or rugby player as Brian O’Driscoll. However, it’s a bitter pill to swallow when my own mother can probably outperform me when call upon to touch ones toes. 

I joined a beginner’s yoga class about 6 or 7 years ago in the college gym. Two weeks into the eight week term, my fellow neophytes were rapidly extending limbs to extremities unimaginable to my rigid mind - they seamlessly slipped from one pose to the next, propped by nimble muscles that held strong in glorious displays of amateur abilities. These arty exhibitions stood in stark contrast to the giraffe in the corner of the room. My own body shook widely when called upon to assume the simplest of poses. Where the lithe bodies of my peers gracefully assumed a stream of flexed body positions, I audibly flapped around like a fish landed onto the deck of a trawler . It seemed to pain our teacher just to look at me.  My version of the ‘V’-like ‘dog pose’ invariably resembled a ‘W’; arms and legs fired out to all four compass directions. At the conclusion of the two month course, while the rest of the class would be advancing onto the intermediate group, my teacher felt it best if I stayed behind to repeat (thankfully she whispered her  assessment  to me in private to save my blushes). I didn’t return.  

In an effort to avoid further shame - or at least to confine it to the four walls of a living room - I bought a yoga DVD last week. Not just any yoga DVD, one for old fogies! I figured a normal DVD mentored by some 20-something-year-old elastic band would sweep through the positions and I wouldn’t be able to keep up (again). Given my penchant for protracted flapping, the pace of a DVD aimed at the 60 year old market seemed about right. In a way, I thought myself to be an embarrassed genius. Unfortunately, the DVD is paced sooooooooooooo slooooooooowly, that I’m blissfully snoring on top my resurrected yoga mat by the time old dear gets around to the first pose. Keep this up and my body is doomed for evermore to be as pliant as concrete. I still can’t touch the top of my socks when bending over (unless I cheat and bend my knees). 

In running related news, I'm awaiting the MRI results; hopefully I’ll have word towards the end of the week. As for my burgeoning golf career - I'm tied in 17th place going into the closing day of the Sinapore open.

154 days to Paris

1 comment:

  1. Hi, thanks for your comment over at my space. To answer your question, coach says that since you can't be in race shape all-year round (it would eventually wear you out) you have to take some down time, which is the base training phase. In that phase you should not race at all in order to let the body recover properly. Running a 5K about 20 seconds per mile slower than my peak 5K pace is just about the max he lets me do, and that's exactly what I ended up doing last Saturday.

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