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Workout: Abs Conditioning: Yoga
Author: chaos

Definitely a little sore from yesterday’s workout, but not as much as I could have been. I’m just hoping that this doesn’t mean I’m going to be really sore tomorrow. A lot of places that don’t normally get sore were affected… upper back, lower back, even the hips, the last probably being from the attempted half lotus positions. The hamstrings are also a little sore, but that’s practically normal. Actually, I was somewhat concerned that they might be really sore… when I did one of the forward bends (hands in namaste behind the back, legs positioned the same as in triangle pose, torso leaning over the forward leg) I was able to get my torso all the way down to my leg, pretty easily, which I’ve never been able to do before, at least not without strain. It was kind of weird, in that I could feel the stretch in my hamstrings, but it didn’t seem like I was really overextending them. Well, it did, and it didn’t. I guess I’ll probably find out tomorrow if I really overdid it, but at the moment it seems like perhaps I was just that warmed up by that point that I was able to do a full stretch. If that’s the case, it could mean interesting things for future workouts.
Anyway, tonight’s workout was pretty standard… I tried to stay focused on form, and think I may have made a discovery to enhance the workout slightly. It’s basically just about keeping the spine curved but more horizontal in the boat poses, which really works the abs. I’m also experimenting a bit with the lowering of the extended legs… if the abs are relaxed, it pulls slightly differently than if I’m trying to extend through the back legs. Not sure if one way or the other is better, just something of note. I’ll probably try and get a slightly earlier workout in tomorrow, anticipating moving back to mornings for the next week or two.

Workout: Yoga Conditioning for Athletes: Mini-workouts
Author: chaos

I’m planning on flipping my workout schedule around to the mornings for the next few weeks, and decided to just get a light workout in today to ease into the transition. I didn’t have a strong sense of wanting to do any particular workout, but I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of time on the workout. So I ended up choosing the running and swimming mini-workouts. Not a whole lot to say about them… I’ve been feeling pretty good about my workouts the last couple of days. I think my attention to detail has been much better since the latest break. I spent some time reading over old entries last night… I forgot a bunch of ideas I was starting to work on back in June, so hopefully I can get back to incorporating a few of those in. In particular, I wanted to start getting the deep lunge into the pre-ultimate routine, since I think it does a nice stretch in a couple of areas that don’t necessarily get stretched all that much. Anyway, just a quick note for tonight, probably an abs yoga workout in the morning.

Workout: Power Yoga: Flexibility
Author: chaos

I was originally planning on doing an abs yoga workout this morning, but then I realized that I really didn’t feel like it. That wasn’t the odd part, however… the odd part was that it wasn’t because I didn’t feel like doing a workout, but because I felt like doing a more challenging workout. I also realized that I forgot to bring a few of my workout discs with me, which is kind of annoying, but I’ll have to deal with it. Not the end of the world, certainly, but slightly irritating nonetheless.
Anyway, today’s workout. I wanted to try and avoid straining my hamstrings overly much, which I always seem to do with this workout. Of course, since I never really figure that out until the next day, I won’t know if I was successful or not until tomorrow, but I at least made an attempt either way. I now have a theory that the problem in the past was that I was tensing my muscles in some of the poses with a lot of hamstring extension. I attempted to relax into those stretches instead, so hopefully that made some difference. Other than that… my balance seemed a little bit off, I was kind of wobbly in a number of poses. On the other hand, focus was relatively decent. At this point in time, I’ll take the focus over the balance for the most part, particularly in familiar workouts like this. So I’d say that I’m reasonably happy with the workout overall, and looking forward to getting some more good workouts in this week.

Workout: Free Form
Author: chaos

The nice thing about the week or two after the holidays is that even if I don’t get quite as much sleep as I might like, I can work off of the extra sleep I got during the break. The problem with that being that it runs out after a week or two, and then I spend the rest of the year being short. And that the sleep was theoretically to make up for previous lost sleep, not future lost sleep. Anyway, last night wasn’t actually that bad. While I didn’t get as much sleep as I would have liked, I didn’t get a ridiculously small amount, either. In fact, I even slept through the night once I got to sleep, which is somewhat rare. And it didn’t take me very long to fall asleep at all, either, which is also rather unusual.
Anyway, the workout was pretty decent. After reading some of my old entries the last few days, I decided to make a small substitution today, and put in a deep lunge instead of warrior I. Normally I’ll probably just add in the extra pose, but I decided to experiment a little today. I think it gives a better stretch in the groin area than warrior I, and I figure the more all around stretching I have before ultimate, the better. I haven’t had any groin pulls or anything, and I’d certainly like to keep it that way. Not much to say other than that. I was fairly out of it, really needing more sleep than I actually got. I probably won’t really make any up tonight, but possibly tomorrow night I will. I most likely will go with an abs workout tomorrow, although if I don’t short myself on time, I might go in for pilates instead of yoga.

Workout: Power Yoga: Flexibility
Author: chaos

Continuing a proud tradition of injuring myself playing ultimate, I managed to do it again yesterday. This one was actually a little unusual, though, in that I really don’t know how the injury itself occurred. I know the play it occurred on, but the injury seemingly had no way of occurring during that play. However, by random coincidence I was speaking with a physical therapy major last night, and she suggested that I may have done it on the jump. She also thought that it was probably a pull/strain of… well, I don’t actually remember the name, but some leg tendon that connects right below the knee. She suggested that I needed to stretch it, which I actually wouldn’t have thought would be the best idea, so it was pretty lucky that I talked to her.
So that brings us to the workout. I ended up sleeping in a little today, although switching to plan B went well. I wasn’t quite sure what kind of stretching would be the most effective, so I thought I’d just try a selection of stuff. Since that was the case, and I don’t have quite the full selection of workouts available, I decided to go back to flexibility. It was pretty decent… trying to work with an injury always causes me to be a little more focused, since I’m monitoring how it’s responding to my actions as well as trying to maximize the workout. Today seemed pretty good, anyway… I was feeling somewhat flexible this morning, which is a little unusual for a morning workout, but I certainly wasn’t complaining. So I felt that I got some pretty good stretching in, although I don’t really know how effective it necessarily was for the injury. I’m just going to have to play it by ear, and hopefully I’ll be able to play ultimate tomorrow.

Workout: Free Form
Author: chaos

Today I felt like doing some of the poses from YfS:s2, but I didn’t feel like going through the slow pace of that workout. So I decided that I’d just incorporate stuff into my free form workout, and see how that went. I started off with my normal selection, two full sun salutations followed by two more incorporating triangle and side stretch. On the next one I went into warrior I, but then extended that into warrior III. On the final one, I went into warrior II like normal, then did triangle and half moon pose. The additions were okay… I could not stay in warrior III to the right. I didn’t have any problem staying in it to the left, though. Half moon was a little shaky on both sides, but particularly on the right, again. That’s not all that unusual… I’ve traditionally had more trouble balancing on my right leg, although in the past warrior III has been an exception to that rule. Of course, that’s largely because I used to have a lot of trouble getting into the pose on the left at all, but I seem to have solved that problem, so I’m not particularly surprised that the left side seems better now. I finished off with cobbler’s pose forward bend, wide angle forward bend, reclining twist, and relaxation pose. My leg is still hurting somewhat, but not nearly as much as it was Wednesday night. So I’m probably going to go to ultimate and attempt to play, and just sit out if I end up not being able to manage. I’m guessing I’ll probably be okay, if not quite at full capacity. Anyway, updates provided as events warrant, as usual.

Workout: Power Yoga: Total Body
Author: chaos

I was originally going to do an abs workout today, but I decided that perhaps I was better off stretching out more today and doing the abs workout tomorrow. I wasn’t particularly inspired by the selection of workouts available, but I eventually decided to try and get in a good total body workout. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do the full workout, but I decided to at least start with the idea of doing the full workout. When I got to the end of the first section, I realized I was running a little low on energy, probably due to not having had much to eat in the last 24 hours. So I decided to go ahead and skip to the last section. I think perhaps I’ve discovered something about stretching in the last couple of weeks… I seemed to have better knowledge of when and where to really extend. So I’m hoping this will mean that my hamstrings aren’t really sore tomorrow. I’ll find out then, of course. I have some new ideas on the matter, at any rate. Nothing overly noteworthy… I bruised my right elbow on the outside edge yesterday at some point, and so that was a little annoying, especially when in pushup pose. However, the problem with my left knee doesn’t seem to have gotten worse, and I certainly wasn’t taking it easy on it, so it seems like it’s going to heal fairly quickly. Maybe I can start planning my next injury now. Or at least planning for it… if only I knew what it was going to be. Anyway, I’ll probably try and get a pilates workout in tomorrow if I can motivate up for it, otherwise just the standard abs yoga, most likely.

Workout: Abs Conditioning: Pilates
Author: chaos

Another long break between pilates abs workouts leads to much abdominal soreness when the time comes to actually do another one. On the plus side, I was able to follow the harder course through much of the workout… I just died in the middle of the double leg raises, but I doubt it would have mattered which track I was following for that. So I skipped those, and I think there was one other part where I followed the modified version, but overall I followed the full version. Rockers were reasonable today, single leg circles or whatever they’re called weren’t all that great. I’m sure there were several things that probably weren’t done ideally, due to ab fatigue. But I think I might be about to the point where I’m ready to start taking this workout on on a consistent basis, so that’s certainly good. Anyway, another stretching workout too early tomorrow morning, and then ultimate at lunch.

Workout: Free Form
Author: chaos

Woke up this morning and the stomach was feeling a little queasy. After thinking about it for a bit, I realized that it’s been feeling a little off since sometime Saturday night. I’m guessing at this point that I probably have some sort of minor stomach virus, although I haven’t really noticed any other symptoms of illness. So hopefully I can keep the problem contained to just the stomach. Anyway, I did a quick check on yogajournal to see what kind of poses might help, but didn’t come up with too much, besides a twist. A few other basics of general decompression like downward dog and shoulderstand also seemed like they might help.
I started out the workout by basically sequencing the swimming mini-workout. That gave me just a bit of general loosening up and stretching, fairly typical fare for free form. After that I started to get a little more creative… sequenced back up to standing, did another triangle, did shoulderstand, then came down and did the twist from the all sports mini-workout (which I still can’t find the name of, but might be a variation of Bharadvaja’s Twist). Finished off with reclining twist and relaxation, as always. I’m not sure how much the workout really helped… certainly I didn’t feel any worse after I was done, and possibly a little better, so I can’t really complain. Anyway, hopefully whatever my problem is clears up fairly quickly, and then I might get something more aggressive in tomorrow, possibly the entire total body workout.

Update: I landed on my forearm and hairline fractured the bone near the elbow while playing ultimate. So I’m probably going to be out for a few weeks, although I might be able to get some abs work in even with the arm immobilized. Will update as appropriate.

Workout: Abs Conditioning: Yoga
Author: chaos

Well, I’m back again, at least somewhat. As it turns out, the fracture in my left elbow isn’t terribly serious, as such things go. Which is to say, there was no need for a cast or anything like that. I was wearing some kind of tube wrap for most of the last week, but since I had my first physical therapy session today, and they prefer to have everything build itself back up if possible (makes sense), I’m not even wearing that now. So to celebrate (or something), I decided to do an abs yoga session.
The session was okay… perhaps even fairly decent, all things considered. The problem being that while the fracture was relatively minor, it was still a fracture, and there’s some pain associated with it. Certain kinds of torquing aren’t very good, lifting things is problematic, and definitely putting weight onto it is an iffy proposition. With all that in mind, I really had to do abs yoga, because there’s very little else I can do. Although I might be able to do all or most of the running mini-workout, now that I think about it. Anyway, while there’s not too much going on with the left arm in this workout, there’s enough to make it a bit of a challenge at this point. So keeping mindful of the arm at all times cut down on my ability to really focus on the workout. Still, it was somewhat nice to get it in… it’s been a fairly hard week of not doing much of anything. While I’m probably stuck with this workout for another week or so, hopefully I’ll be able to expand out a little bit (maybe to the pilates abs workout) fairly quickly, and I imagine within a month my arm should be mostly back to normal, if not sooner. For now, I’ll probably just try and get workouts in fairly regularly, and start building back up when I can.

Workout: Abs Conditioning: Yoga
Author: chaos

Well, I intended to return to yoga yesterday with a light stretching workout, but unfortunately ended up turning my alarm off and sleeping an extra hour. So I passed on the workout, and just stretched a little bit before ultimate. Ultimate was okay… I ran into the wall once, which wasn’t that bad, and laid out onto the arm once, which was just dumb. However, it doesn’t seem to have done any additional damage, perhaps just retarding the healing a little. I intend to be more intelligent about the matter on Wednesday, and stay off of the arm. I’ll try to avoid the wall as well, although that’s a little harder, but I’ll do my best.
Today, though, I managed to get back to the yoga with another abs workout. That was my plan for this week… alternating stretching workouts with abs workouts. I should test my arm again, actually… I may be able to do downward dog now, which would allow me to do full vinyasa sequences easily. I might be able to come up with something anyway, but it would definitely be a little trickier. Today’s workout was reasonable… I was able to do the workout without encountering any real trouble with my arm, which was good. I could tell that the arm was in less than perfect condition, but it wasn’t forcing me to make modifications to the way that I normally move throughout the workout. Definitely a good sign. Other than that, the ab work felt decent, not spectacular, but I think at the moment it’s more about testing my limits and starting up the routine again. A little frustrating, since it’ll probably be at least another couple weeks before I can start doing the intermediate workout again, but that’s something I’ll have to deal with.

Workout: Free Form
Author: chaos

Went for the free form workout today. I wasn’t really expecting a lot out of it, since I was uncertain about downward dog, and quite certain that pushups and the like weren’t happening. I started off with the total body warmup, ending after I had done two downward dogs. The downward dogs were fine, but it was still a bit problematic moving through the lunges. So I decided to modify out into the style of YfS:s2, and just do a side to side motion from standing. I actually started out with triangle pose, surprisingly enough. I didn’t think I’d be able to support myself with that arm, but it really wasn’t a problem at all. I may have been taking a bit more of my weight onto my legs than I normally do, but other than that, it was pretty much standard. After that I did warrior II, then warrior I. I was having a little trouble with my stance today… I think I started it off too wide. So I tired fairly quickly in warrior I. After that I went for wide angle standing forward bend. I wanted to do the forward bend over the front leg with hands in namaste behind the back, but the arm wasn’t ready for that movement, so I passed on that. Then I went into a little bit of seated stretching, doing cobbler’s pose foward bend, seated wide leg forward bend, and a regular forward bend. Nothing terribly exciting, but it felt good to get the workout in, and my arm was able to do a little more than I really expected, so I’m pretty happy, overall. I may try to get pilates abs in tomorrow, or I might just go with yoga abs again.

Workout: Abs Conditioning: Yoga
Author: chaos

Well, I completely failed to get up early this morning. In fact, I barely managed to get up even to go to work. The lack of motivation to leave the warmth of the electric blanket was quite strong. And the motivation to go to work was that weak. And, I was pretty tired. Although the last hour in bed was more about not wanting to go to work than anything else. Anyway, the point of all this is that I didn’t get in a workout before work. Surprisingly, though, I managed to motivate myself to get the workout in after work. I’m not sure exactly what that shows, but I’m fairly certain it’s not a bad sign. As for the workout itself, it was decent. After the beginning, I managed to start focusing on the workout relatively well, so I think I got a decent amount of abs work in. Certainly I was feeling it through the boat pose section. I lost the focus again at the end, which isn’t good, but not terribly surprising. I’ve been feeling a bit mentally off for the last week or so, probably exacerbated by the lack of activity leading into this week. It wasn’t even quite a two week break from everything, but still… I’m clearly used to getting some type of activity in. And after the workout, I did a pushup. It was very slow and controlled, but still, I couldn’t do that even on Monday, so this is improvement. Anyway, I plan on getting in a stretching workout tomorrow before ultimate, so at least there’s not much danger of slacking off on that one. Until then…

Workout: Free Form
Author: chaos

Did more or less the same workout today that I did on Wednesday. The only real difference of note was that I did side angle pose instead of warrior I. Otherwise, pretty much the same. I didn’t feel like I was having as much trouble with my standing poses today, possibly due to better leg positioning. And my arm definitely felt a little stronger… it only twinged slightly at a few places. Progress. Otherwise… I felt that my legs were fairly well stretched. My hamstrings were tight, again. I’d really like to one day get to the point where my hamstrings are rarely sore. But that’s probably still far in the future. Not too much to say about this workout, really. I’ll try to get a workout in tomorrow, if not, then definitely on Sunday, barring serious injury today.

Workout: Yoga Conditioning for Athletes: Mini-workouts
Author: chaos

Went with the running, swimming, and all sports trifecta again today. I knew that this selection would have very few pushups in it, which is why I went with it. I hadn’t tried another pushup since Thursday night, but I felt that my arm had healed quite a bit since then, and I should be able to handle a relatively light workout. Not only was I correct, but I was able to handle it without any problem whatsoever. My arm had a very slight hint of feeling strange during the pushups, but that easily could have been my imagination. So I’ll probably be getting back to a pretty regular schedule pretty soon. I’m not sure that I’m quite ready for something like py:strength, but I think some of the other workouts will be pretty accessible. So with luck, in another two weeks or so I can get back to the intermediate workout, and start making some progress there. Not much to report about the workout itself… my hamstrings felt quite tight when I started, but that’s fairly common. My right calf muscle was also pretty tight during the first downward dog, which is somewhat unusual, but it loosened up after that. Focus was okay, nothing to write home about. I’ll probably go with an abs workout tomorrow, perhaps balanceball, although I may just end up taking the day off. I’m being fairly lenient with myself while healing from injuries, but perhaps that’s not a bad thing. I just need to work on not injuring myself, really.

Workout: Power Yoga: Flexibility
Author: chaos

I wanted to get back into a more complete workout today, so I decided to go with flexibility. I was originally considering stamina, but I decided I wanted to go for a bit more of a challenge than that. It went pretty well through the first part… arm was feeling fine, I seemed to have a good sense of the poses, etc. Once I got into the section where I was jumping between standing forward bend and push up pose, it started to degrade a little. After a couple of the exercises, my arm started to ache a little, so I decided to skip the last two exercises in the section (well, really only the last one), and go to the stretches. They went reasonably, except for seated wide angle forward bend… I felt really tight during that one, for some reason. Perhaps because I haven’t been stretching nearly as much in the last three weeks as I normally would have. Anyway, so my arm isn’t quite back to full strength, but it’s definitely getting closer. Hopefully another week and it will be ready for all but the most strenuous work. Some things are up with work… I might have a lot more time to dedicate to my practice soon, or at least somewhat more time. We’ll see how that goes… I’ll probably know more after tomorrow. Anyway, still working on getting back to a consistent schedule, although I suspect that things may be a little off for another month or so. As always, I’ll play it by ear.