BBM Connection

Workout: Abs Conditioning: Pilates, Yoga Conditioning for Athletes: Mini-workouts
Author: chaos

I’ve been feeling quite a bit better over the last couple of days. Mentally speaking, that is. My motivation to do things has returned, and I’ve felt ready (and perhaps even eager) to move forward with things. This has shown in my yoga practice, as well as other things… I’ve been getting in better workouts, and I’ve noticed that the workouts seem insufficient when I take it too easy. For today, I wanted to mostly rest the legs up, and getting in some good abdominal work seemed like an excellent way to do that. I was pretty happy with the workout… I followed the full version almost the entire way. The only exceptions were during the series of five… I did two of the scissor like things without my arms, but finished the last three using them, and I didn’t do the last two or three double leg raises, because my abs couldn’t raise the legs anymore. The bicycle was fairly weak, as usual, but other than those things, I felt like I did one of my best jobs in terms of form. Overall, I’m not really complaining. After I finished that up, I wanted to get a little bit of hamstring stretching in, because my legs were feeling a bit sore from the workout yesterday. So I just did the running workout. I was hoping that would allow me to stretch the hamstrings, without putting any strain on the tailbone, since it was pretty much a day off in that regard. I did notice that my hips felt quite flexible for the first stretch, quite a bit more so than usual. Or at least, they felt like they were already stretched, and didn’t need to warm up. Something like that. For tomorrow, I’m not quite sure what I’ll do before ultimate… possibly free form, just to mix things up a little.

Workout: Intermediate Yoga
Author: chaos

Unfortunately, ultimate was cancelled today due to inclement weather. Really, the weather wasn’t all that bad, just rainy, but since it had been raining much of the day, it was felt that the field would be in relatively poor condition. While annoying, the logic for that is reasonable, so I suppose I can’t be too unhappy about it. However, this left me without a proper workout for the day, since normally I expect to get in a few hours of exercise on a Tuesday. I thought about going for a run, but wasn’t particularly in the mood, particularly considering the rain. So I instead decided to take advantage of the unexpected opening in my schedule, and get in an intermediate yoga workout.
I was reasonably pleased with the workout. I was feeling a little tired somewhat early in the workout, particularly in the shoulders, but I don’t think it had a serious effect on the workout as a whole. Half moon pose went pretty well today. Warrior III to the right wasn’t good, but to the left was okay. I still can’t really do revolved triangle to the right. Of course, the sore tailbone problem doesn’t help that at all. I’m starting to get it down going to the left, but it’s still hard. Eventually I’ll get there, I’m sure.
Inverted poses weren’t too bad. I had some trouble kicking up into handstand, but eventually managed to get into both of them. I got into the arm stand without too much trouble, but it was really tiring today, perhaps because I got into the handstands. So I ended up coming out of it fairly quickly. However, I managed to get into headstand right away, and I was able to hold it for the entire time. I think I have a much better understanding of it now. I was even able to move my legs away from the wall for a little bit. So that’s a definite improvement.
The closing section was also a little bit better today, I think. I felt like I had a slightly better understanding of what I was trying to do with the bridge pose. I continued to work on increasing my hip flexibility, attempting all of the half-lotus poses. Admittedly, I don’t do them well, but I think if I keep working at them, I’ll start getting the flexibility I need. Shoulderstand was okay, but my arms were really unhappy for some reason. They were tingling pretty badly just from holding it for the time of the video. I must have been cutting off the circulation of something, although I’m not quite sure how. Anyway, I’ll probably take it a little bit easier tomorrow… I think I’ll try to get two shorter workouts in. Maybe intermediate mat workout and something else. Until then…

Workout: Intermediate Mat Workout, Power Yoga: Stamina
Author: chaos

As I predicted, I went with the intermediate mat workout today. I was pretty pleased with it… I think I’m starting to get this pilates stuff down fairly well. Not everything, of course. I don’t like my form on the leg circles, for instance. But I’m not sure that I possess the necessary flexibility to do them as well as I’d like. Teaser is still tough, but I’m getting better. Side kicks are probably the most difficult thing for me… I’m not quite sure I’m setting myself up for them properly. I need to study the video again, I think. However, I’m getting really good with the rockers. It was hard to imagine when I first started doing pilates that I’d ever have that much control on a rocker, but it isn’t really that hard. Or so it seems now. The series of five stuff is still tough, but as long as I keep at it, I’m sure I’ll eventually be able to do that completely, too. At any rate, if I just continue trying to work on my form and make improvements, I’m sure that I’ll eventually be pretty good with this stuff.
I was feeling a little bit tired after the pilates workout, but in my quest for better and more complete workouts, I didn’t want to just do the single workout tonight, knowing that I’ll probably just do stretching workouts tomorrow. However, I was feeling enough fatigue that I didn’t want a particularly challenging workout, either. So I decided to just do a simple py:stamina workout. I tried to focus on the breath/movement integration. I wasn’t particularly successful with it, but it’s good just to remember to attempt it periodically. Eventually, I may actually be able to really use that throughout a workout. Let’s see… I noticed that my mat was kind of slippery after having already done the pilates workout on it. I need to wash the mat one of these days. Hmmm… tomorrow wouldn’t be a bad time, actually, but I doubt I’ll get to it. Today would have been good. Anyway, something I should try to remember to do fairly soon. I might have to start using two mats during the summer, given how much I sweat during hard workouts. Fortunately, I have enough mats to do that without a problem. Hopefully that will keep slippery mats from causing too many problems during workouts. I’d also like to note that lost in all my complaining about the tailbone soreness is the fact that my right knee seems to have mostly healed. I’m now able to do one-legged forward bends with my leg almost back all the way to where it should be. This is a relatively new development, probably within the last month. It’s pretty cool, though, since I was beginning to wonder if it was ever going to recover. I think my emphasis on increasing my hip flexibility has really helped the cause, though, and will hopefully continue to help me protect my knees and get more out of my workouts.

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

Went in for another stretching segment before ultimate. It felt pretty good… I’ve been pretty satisfied with this set of mini-workouts in terms of stretching. As I come to a greater understanding of the poses, they seem more effective for stretching, as well. Ultimate was pretty good… the weather was absolutely beautiful. I can’t say that I played as well as I would have liked, but that seems to be the case all too often lately. Somewhat frustrating. Still, it’s a lot of fun. And there’s talk of adding another day, so I can really play about as often as I want. Well, perhaps not as often as I want, but as often as I’m physically capable of. Anyway, after the game was over, I did a little bit of stretching on the field, and then came home and did a little more stretching. I didn’t have any trouble with cramping today, but it was both warmer and I had a sports drink, so it’s difficult to say if either of those was the primary factor. I suppose it’s not terribly important, as long as I keep up the not cramping. Not sure what type of workout I’ll go for tomorrow… I might take it easy, depending on how my body is feeling, and just do a strength workout of some type or something. Until then…

Workout: No workout
Author: chaos

I’ve been slowly working on the site for the past two months, and I’ve finally gotten it to a state that I’m pretty satisfied with. Most of the changes have been pretty minor, at least in terms of outside appearance. I may work on the site design itself at some point, but haven’t yet felt inspired to do that. Overall, I’ve attempted to make things a little more accessible, menus more intuitive, and maintain valid xhtml. Behind the scenes, I’ve tried to clean up my MT templates, reduce build time, and create human-readable source pages. Although I’m not sure if that’s all that important… I don’t know if anyone besides me ever views the source pages, anyway.
So, on to the changes. I added category archives a while ago, but they were pretty basic. They pretty much mimicked the main page, except with all of the entries for the one category. I’ve customized them somewhat now, with an archive drop down menu that links to each entry on the category archive page itself, which is the same style that I was using for the monthly archives. I modified the author archives for everyone besides myself to actually have all the entries for that author, in the style of the category or monthly archives. I made this decision based on the fact that the other authors haven’t been authoring anything, and so I’m not concerned about the size of the pages getting out of hand. I’m considering changing my own archive to have something like the last 25 entries, and then have the rest accessible via the drop down menu linking to the individual archives. Or perhaps merging the current style with that. Related to the lack of other people posting, I removed the secondary navigation bar from the individual archive pages. I was primarily using it to be able to easily read through all the entries by a particular author, but since I can now do that from their master archive page, it doesn’t seem necessary to have that ability from the individual archives. Perhaps one day it will become useful again, but until then, I think this method is cleaner. Also on the individual archive pages, I upgraded the comments area to the new style for MT3, which loads much faster than the old style did.
On the main page, I finally linked in my about page. Most of the content for that page was written two years ago or so, but I never got the page into a state I liked until recently. I modified the archives drop down for the monthly archives to break down by year, and then month, because the list of monthly archives was getting too long. Now I’m sure I’ll never have more than 12 in a division. The last time I wrote about changes I was making, I had made it so that you could access every entry in the blog from that menu. That worked fine at that time, when the blog only had about 150 entries, but it started taking a really long time to build and creating an immense file once the blog was up to 400 entries or so, so I was forced to move away from that. Invisible to the common user, I’ve added an “Edit Entry” link to every location that an entry is displayed, so that I can have one click edit access for correcting typos and the like. And finally, I’ve created a link on every page in the blog that shows it to be valid XHTML 1.1, with a link to the validation result for that particular page.
There are still a few things that I’d like to work on… I’d like to do a redesign of the master archives, I think. I’ll probably change the format of my own archives as well, but I already have ideas on that. I need to add a little more content to the workouts page, and update some of the existing content. I should also update the content of the about page, since now that I’ve finally linked it in, some of the other changes I’ve made have rendered parts of the information obsolete. On the back end, I’d like to try and optimize my templates just a little more, although I’m not sure how much more I can get. I would like to cut down on the build time if I can, but we’ll see how difficult that will be. There’s not much, if anything, that I’d be willing to sacrifice content-wise, so I’d have to figure out more efficient ways of generating the same content. I should really clean up my CSS, but realistically speaking, that’s not going to happen until I do a visual redesign. And I’d still like to make the menu bar on the master archives page start with January each year, but perhaps the eventual redesign of that entire page will render that point moot. Altogether, though, I’m pretty satisfied with the state of things, and will probably take a break from working on the site for a while.

Workout: Yoga for Strength: session 1
Author: chaos

As I somewhat expected, went with YfS:s1 today. I considered tacking on an abs yoga workout, but some people came over just as I was finishing up the workout, and since I had already considered taking it a little easier today, I decided to go ahead and call it a day. The workout went pretty well… I was fairly well focused, although I did have a little trouble with the breathing at points. The slower pace of this workout throws me off sometimes. I was trying to emphasize the shoulder work, particularly in the headstand preparation section. I think that actually doing headstand a few times has really helped me understand what I need to work on for the inverted arm balances. Mostly shoulder strength, although once I’ve gotten that up somewhat, I’ll probably find some other things. Because of that, I think that I’ll be spending more time emphasizing the strength workouts in the next couple of months, in order to more quickly advance my abilities with the intermediate workout. I should get decent flexibility practice from the longer workouts, like total body, as well as on days that I play ultimate, without needing to focus on that aspect as much right now. I did have one observation during tonight’s workout… I just realized that setting up the legs and feet for bridge pose is basically the same as setting up for upward bow. Now that I realize that, I’ll be sure to pay even more attention to the footwork for bridge pose in the future. Anyway, I’ll possibly do total body tomorrow, although I may decide that I want to get an abs workout in, and go with pilates abs and possibly py:strength instead.

Workout: Power Yoga: Strength
Author: chaos

My original plan for tonight was to go with an abs pilates workout. However, my stomach has been a bit unhappy ever since dinner, so it didn’t seem like an abs workout was the greatest of all possible plans. Instead, I decided to continue my focus on strength training, and went for the py:strength workout. It went reasonably well… I’ve probably had better editions of this workout, but I’ve certainly had worse. The only thing of real note tonight was an experimentation with my hand position for pushup pose and downward dog. I’ve tended to have a fairly wide hand positioning in the past, at least the recent past. Tonight I experimented a bit with having a more narrow position, only about as wide as my shoulders. It certainly made pushup pose feel a little bit more challenging. However, I did notice that it was hurting my wrists a little, on the outside half. I think the perhaps having the wrists slightly narrower than I have been, but slightly wider than shoulder width, is going to work out the best. Anyway, after the workout I considered doing an abs yoga workout, since my stomach seemed to be doing a little better, but decided just to hold off until tomorrow, when I’ll hopefully get the abs pilates workout in, since I’d rather do that one. So that’s the planned workout for tomorrow, most likely with something else, but I’m not sure what yet.

Workout: Abs Conditioning: Pilates, Yoga Conditioning for Athletes: Mini-workouts
Author: chaos

Got in the anticipated pilates abs workout today. I was very pleased with the beginning of the workout… I was really trying to have optimal form, and I think that was helping to make the exercises even more effective. Of course, in a situation like this, there’s a penalty to having more effective exercises… in this case, quicker fatigue of the abs. Still, I think it’s a step in the right direction, with the eventual goal being to actually have optimal form throughout the workout. That, of course, is still a very long ways in the future. But the more often I do this workout, the stronger my abs should become, so hopefully I’ll be pretty close by the end of the year or so. I have been getting much better about making this my go-to abs workout, instead of slacking off and doing yoga abs all the time. I did have one observation… I think for the middle exercise in the series of five, I should just follow the modified version, at least for now. It’s not a particularly easy exercise for me anyway, and trying to do it without my arms just kills the abs, right before the double leg raise, which is just silly. So I think I’ll just accept that modification for the moment, until my abs get much much stronger.
After finishing up the abs workout, I was feeling a little tired (I always do after that workout), but wasn’t quite ready to throw in the towel. So I decided to go for some mini-workouts. However, I ended up choosing to mix things up a little, and try out a couple of the ones that I don’t normally do. So I started off with the golf workout. There was a fair amount of twisting, presumably to help balance against all the twisting done in golf. After that I did the cycling workout. That contained a lot of backbends, including the deep lunge. I don’t think I had realized that before, or at least I hadn’t remembered it. I may start going back to that one a little more often in the future, at least if my back is feeling a little achy. I finished off with swimming, but with a few modifications. I decided just to sit out the triangle pose to the right, staying in the lunge instead. And instead of the wide angle standing forward bend, I did a regular seated forward bend. The idea was that since I hadn’t really done anything to the right tailbone with the rest of the workout, it would be a shame to strain it right at the end, and so I modified around it. I think I did extend it a bit with the side angle poses (one in cycling as well as the one in swimming), but not too badly. For tomorrow, I think I’ll go for something longer, perhaps total body or even possibly intermediate yoga. I’ve been getting these workouts in a little later the last couple of days, and I’m hoping to get back into a better schedule, although clearly I’ll get to the workout earlier on Tuesday, so perhaps it’s not that important. Anyway, until tomorrow…

Workout: Abs Conditioning: Yoga, Power Yoga: Flexibility
Author: chaos

Well, I got to this workout a little too late to be able to do intermediate yoga today. I was afraid of straining the sore right tailbone with total body, and just wasn’t in the mood for YCfA. So I decided to go a little bit easier, and got in a flexibility workout. It went pretty well… I was breathing fairly well, and trying to be more precise in my movements. I was very cautious with the triangle pose, not extending into it fully on the right. I also held back on wide angle seated forward bend. Overall, I think it is getting better, so I’m hoping that if I’m properly cautious for another few days, it will finish healing and I can go back to using it normally again.
The flexibility workout felt a little light by itself, so I decided to go for a challenge and did the abs yoga workout. I think it went pretty well… I tried to continue that precision of movement. Certainly I was feeling the burn… I figured that I would, given the abs pilates workout yesterday. It definitely made this workout more challenging, but I think I held up pretty well. For tomorrow, I’ll probably get in some mini-workouts, although I might substitute cycling for swimming, to try and avoid the tailbone as well as to get in a little more backbending. It’ll probably depend on how I feel then, though.

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

Went with the running, cycling, and all sports mini-workouts today to warm up for ultimate. While I think that I do like the swimming workout better in the middle slot, the cycling workout isn’t a bad substitute. It’s probably better on warm days, but today was a pretty nice day, so it worked. Not too much else to say about the workout. Ultimate was okay, although the relatively low skill level of this game frustrates me sometimes. However, no injuries, and I didn’t feel like I was going to pull anything, despite having no energy drink. Thursday’s supposed to be a lot cooler… I’m hoping to make a drink before then, and see if I have cramping problems. Maybe the energy drink and temperature is more of an either thing than a both. Although I do work harder in Southfield, so it’s hard to say for sure. Anyway, just did a little bit of light leg stretching after I got home, no big deal, really. I did forget to mention yesterday that my shoulders felt a bit tired while I was doing the flexibility workout, so it’s probably for the best that I didn’t do intermediate yoga or something like that. Anyway, not too sure what I’ll do tomorrow… I might just take it easy, possibly do a YfS workout or something.

Workout: Yoga for Strength: session 2
Author: chaos

Had a fairly miserable workout tonight. I’m not quite sure what the problem was… for some reason, I just didn’t seem to be with the workout. It started off okay… I went through the opening vinyasa sequence without trouble, and made it through the side stretches before things started going downhill. Half moon pose was shaky, but I’ve had worse. After that, though, things were pretty bad. I had a lot of trouble with tree pose on the right, and couldn’t even manage to get into the pose on the left. Warrior I was okay, but warrior III was fairly miserable on both sides. I got into it on both sides, but not for very long at all. I used the blocks for pendulum, and was at least able to get up on the first one. Crane pose was actually reasonably decent, but even that didn’t feel particularly good. I was considering an abs yoga workout after the first workout, but then decided that I just wasn’t up for it tonight, and to quit while I wasn’t too far behind. I think nutrition might have been an issue… while it doesn’t happen nearly as often anymore, I do sometimes forget to eat enough during the day, and I think today was one of those days. So I’m going to make something to eat, and just chalk today up as a substandard yoga day. Hopefully I’ll be back in the groove for tomorrow, although since it’s an ultimate day, that might not be quite as important as it would otherwise be.

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

Went with mini-workouts again for the ultimate warmup today. I was running a bit late, so I only did running and all sports before heading out. Given that I’m still trying to finish healing the tailbone, skipping swimming didn’t seem like a bad idea. Ultimate was fun. It was kind of wet, although it didn’t really rain at all while we were playing. It was also somewhat cool, although not nearly as cool as it could have been. Overall, I didn’t play all that well, but I didn’t play particularly poorly, either. Afterwards, we did a layout drill since the ground was pretty much perfect for practicing. That was fun, although very tiring. And laying out repetitively gives one a bit of a headache. Still, good fun. After that, I did a somewhat long standing forward bend to try and stretch the legs out. When I got home, I did a bit of downward dog, the all sports twist, and reclining leg stretch to try and keep myself from tightening up. Overall, I feel okay, although the outside of my left wrist is sore again, and I seem to be a bit tender in the quads, close to the knee on the inside. I’ll probably be a little sore tomorrow, but I should be able to work through it without much trouble, and maybe get a good workout in on Saturday.

Workout: Abs Conditioning: Pilates
Author: chaos

I wasn’t quite sure I was ready for this workout tonight. My legs were feeling a little sore from ultimate in a way that suggested pilates abs wasn’t going to be particularly easy. However, I’ve let myself off the hook for this workout too many times in the past, so I decided to go ahead and just do my best. It wasn’t all that great, relatively, but not too bad. The rockers were a little off today, for some reason. I was having trouble rocking back to the right position. I just gave up on the double leg raise after about two of them… they really weren’t working well with the soreness, and I figured I’d have a little more to give later if I just skipped them. And I was right… that was the best crisscross I’ve done in a long time, and later on, the teaser was definitely better than normal. Still, I don’t feel like I got quite as much of a workout as I normally do, but I suppose that’s the way it goes sometimes. Not quite sure what I’ll do tomorrow… it’ll probably depend on how sore I’m still feeling. Preliminarily, I’m think something like YCfA, but we’ll see how I feel then.

Workout: Yoga Conditioning for Athletes
Author: chaos

Tried to go in for the full YCfA workout today. Admittedly, I wasn’t sure I was really in the mood for a full workout, but it seemed like I should go for it, anyway. Things started off okay, and although I still wasn’t really getting into it, I did appreciate stretching out somewhat. That was fine until I hit the first lunge sequence. Then I realized that I really had wrenched my left shoulder a bit playing ultimate on Thursday, and that I wasn’t just imagining it. Since I was feeling a bit out of sorts with the workout anyway, I decided to just skip the middle section and protect the shoulder. I didn’t even particularly feel like doing the rest of the workout either, but didn’t want to take it that easy, so I went through with it. I think a bit of my problem over the last couple of days has been diet… My schedule has been somewhat off, so I haven’t been eating as regularly as I was for a while, and I think it’s affecting my energy levels somewhat. I think the solution is to reestablish a slightly more normal schedule, and eat my meals regularly again. Hopefully that’s something I’ll be doing in the next couple of days, since now I have injuries to heal in addition to my normal nutritional needs. I’m probably going to take it easy on the shoulder, at least for tomorrow… I might do an abs workout or something, possibly balanceball, since I haven’t done that in quite a while.

Workout: Abs Conditioning: Balanceball
Author: chaos

After tonight’s workout, I have a feeling that it’s going to be a little bit longer than I was hoping before my shoulder is healed. Unfortunately, I think that the injury may be a slight strain to the rotator cuff again. While not as severe as the problem I had last year, it is the same shoulder, which certainly isn’t a good thing. I’ll have to look through the archives, and see if I took any particular actions to heal it, besides just avoiding it. I’m pretty sure I didn’t… I seem to recall from glancing through the archives that October of last year basically consisted of abs yoga, free form, and maybe some mini-workouts, because I was rehabilitating the shoulder. I don’t think that the problem will require that this time, but I’ll have to continue to evaluate as I go.
Tonight’s workout was decent. I had to modify one or two of the exercises in order to accommodate the shoulder, but not too many. I felt like I was giving my abs a pretty good workout… I have an easier time focusing during this workout, for some reason. Or at least, that’s the way it seems. Anyway, I was pretty happy with the workout, although a bit tentative about the shoulder. I’ll probably do a little review tonight, and resurrect something free form tomorrow from the days of the last shoulder problem. Hopefully if I’m careful, I can regain full use by the end of the week, and get on with the serious workouts.

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

Normally, I’d only do this set of workouts to prepare for ultimate. However, after digging through my archives last night, I determined that this would probably be a good way to test out the shoulder without undue strain. I went with the normal sequence of running, swimming, and all sports. I considered saving that sequence for tomorrow, but since I don’t really think there’s going to be a game tomorrow, I decided to just go for it tonight. If there does turn out to be a game tomorrow, I’ll just make up some free form stuff instead.
I’m a little uncertain about tonight’s workout, though. Certainly I was fairly careful, and didn’t press too hard into anything. Everything in the workout was accessible, even if cautious negotiation was required at times. And yet… I’m not sure that I didn’t push too much, anyway. Actually, after going through the workout, I’m not too certain that the problem is rotation… I think it’s extension at certain angles. Which does make for a more interesting problem, granted. I also don’t know what to do with that information right now, except try to avoid further strain. To that effect, I think there will be quite a few abs workouts in the near future, and possibly some days off as well. The only other note of tonight is that the tailbone still hasn’t healed, which is annoying… I thought that it had, since I rested it for a number of days. Anyway, probably something light tomorrow, either free form or abs, depending on whether ultimate happens or not.

Workout: Free Form
Author: chaos

Surprisingly, the weather held up pretty well today. The forecast was calling for showers and potential thunderstorms, but it never did more than drizzle somewhat. So the game ended up being on. Going with the plan I developed last night, I did some free form stretching. I started off with the opening of the running workout, then just started flowing with whatever felt good, or wherever I wanted to stretch a little more. Followed the beginning of the total body workout for a little bit, then did a deep lunge, then finished off with the tail end of all sports, giving me a reasonable all around stretch without straining the shoulder.
Ultimate was decent… the field was a little bit wet, but we managed to find a fairly dry area. It wasn’t optimal, but it was good enough. Had a fairly decent turnout, considering that a number of people probably thought the game wasn’t going to happen. Afterwards, I went in for some more free form stretching. Started with the running opening stretch again, then went in for a little bit of backbending with cat pose. After that, moved into some sitting stretches, then finished off with a closing sequence reminiscent of total body. Overall, I reached my goals of getting a decent stretch and not straining the shoulder, so I was pretty satisfied with that. My legs are feeling a little tired right now… today was fairly brutal, for some reason. Might have just been the time… probably played for over 2 hours, mostly continuously. Anyway, hopefully I’ll be ready for Thursday, although it’s supposed to rain again then. People will still show, there, so it’s more a matter of not being ideal conditions for me. Anyway, I’ll probably go with an abs workout tomorrow, quite likely pilates if I can talk myself into it.

Workout: Abs Conditioning: Pilates
Author: chaos

I was having some trouble motivating to do this workout tonight, despite having planned on doing it. However, my partner decided to do it as well, and that helped me just go ahead and get it in. It certainly wasn’t my best workout, but it wasn’t too bad. I considered following the modified version throughout, but then I went ahead with the full version for most of it. The only exception to that being the series of five, which I knew there was no way that I’d make it through with the full version. I did make it through with the modified version, although not easily. I have to admit that it doesn’t feel like my abs have been gaining a lot of strength lately. I don’t know if this is because I haven’t been eating as well as I could, or if I’ve just plateaued for the moment. Maybe I need to do some sort of different abs exercises to shake things up. On the other hand, it could just be that I’ve been doing them often enough that they don’t fully recover from the last session before I hit them again. Anyway, the session was okay. I have trouble with the rockers again today… I seem to have lost the sense of the balance for those. Teaser was probably a little bit better today, perhaps because I hadn’t killed myself in the series of five. Anyway, I’m anticipating ultimate tomorrow, so I’ll likely go with mini-workouts before and free form afterwards.

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

Lost track of time before ultimate today, so I only ended up doing the running and all sports workouts. Although given the condition of my shoulder, I’m not sure that I really wanted to do more than that anyway. Once I got out there, it turned out to be considerably colder than I was anticipating, and windy, as well. All of that combined with the fact that my fingers have been hurting a little lately, presumably from throwing my forehand, made it a somewhat miserable day. I then managed to wrench my right shoulder while laying out for a disc, which certainly didn’t improve matters. When I got home, I did a little light stretching of the legs, just to try and keep from tightening up too much. My right quad is a little tight on the outside, but I’m not quite sure what to do about that. Anyway, I’m probably going to take the next couple of days off in order to let my shoulders recover. The first edition of Monday night pickup is starting next week, and I’m hoping to be able to play then, but we’ll see how the shoulders are doing. I might have to even take a few days of ultimate off, since I’d rather heal and be able to play normally than risk playing with pain all season. As always, further bulletins as events warrant.

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

Did a short workout today to warm up for ultimate. Just went with running and all sports again. Resting the shoulder over the weekend definitely helped, although it’s still not all that close to fully healed. However, as long as I avoid doing anything too bad to it, I should be able to have it finish healing by the end of next weekend. If not, I may end up taking next week off from ultimate. Ultimate was fun… weather was decent, a bit cooler than I consider ideal, but definitely far better than last Thursday. If I hadn’t been worried about the shoulder, I’d have probably been really happy with it. We only got up to five on five with two subs (although one of the guys really shouldn’t have been playing), but it was okay. I think everyone got involved, and had a pretty good time. I took it fairly easy overall, tried to cut down on the amount of throwing I was doing, particularly long throws, with a certain amount of success. I think I overused a muscle in the front of the shoulder compensating for the injury, though. However, I think that’ll be okay, I just need to tone down the usage tomorrow. It’s supposed to be even nicer than today, which should mean a lot of people coming out, so I think I’ll probably just sit a lot, maybe work with some people on their throws a little bit. I’m actually hoping to be pretty much recovered by Thursday, if I’m lucky, but we’ll see what happens. After ultimate, just did a bit of light stretching for the legs, nothing special. I’ll probably go for something similar tomorrow, and may take Wednesday off, if it seems wise.
I did want to mention that I got two new workouts last Wednesday, Yoga Burn and Advanced Yoga. Because of the injuries, I haven’t done either of them yet, although I’ve watched them. Yoga Burn looks pretty interesting, although it may end up being a little too easy. It’s supposed to be a slow movement workout, similar in idea to doing negatives in weight lifting, I think. The main advanced yoga workout is way beyond me right now, as I suspected. A lot of arm balances, many of them inverted. Something to aspire to. The main reason I chose to get the workout now, though, was because it includes a hip opening workout. I looked at that, and it seems pretty accessible, but I’m waiting for the tailbone to heal before getting into it. It also includes an advanced pranayama section (breath work), but I haven’t gotten around to watching that yet. I also got some sweet DDR pads on Saturday, so I have a new option for keeping in shape. I’m guessing I won’t use them a ton during the summer, but I predict near daily play once the outdoor ultimate season ends. I’ll probably try and play once or twice a week until then, just to keep in practice, but nothing too strenuous, is my guess. Anyway, that’s all for now, hopefully I’ll have good news (or at least not bad news) to report after ultimate tomorrow.

Workout: Free Form
Author: chaos

Went with some light free form stretching for ultimate today. I actually put in the disc and started the mini-workouts for running and all sports, but that was more about timing than anything else. I started with the initial stretch from running, then went into downward dog, but after that I started doing some of my own sequencing. Did a bit of standing forward bend, and some backbend lunge. Then some one legged forward bend. Somewhere in there I had gotten up for a second to go to the all sports workout, so after the one legged forward bend, I rejoined the video for the rest of the workout, starting with the seated twist. Actually, I was looking up a pose last night, and happened to stumble upon this one, which does actually have a name. The one in the video is a slight variation on Ardha Matsyendrasana, or Half Lord of the Fishes Pose. In general, I prefer the English name of the poses, but this might be an exception. I actually went for the full version today, the only difference being that in the modified version, the top arm is holding the knee from the outside, instead of tucking the shoulder inside the knee. I think the full version gives a slightly better stretch of the hip.
As was my plan, I took it pretty easy at ultimate. Of course, I often say that I’m going to do that, but then I don’t actually manage to do so. I still didn’t manage to take it easy enough… I seem to have strained a groin muscle of some sort. There’s something ironic about that, since I made a special point of getting in a good groin stretch today. Alas. On the plus side, my right shoulder is feeling considerably better after playing, strangely enough. My current theory is that I just overexerted a muscle yesterday in compensation for the shoulder, and what it really needed was to be warmed up and stretched out again, without overexerting. Which may actually be true of this groin injury, as well. After I got home, just did a little light stretching to try and open up the groin a little, which may or may not have helped. As of right now, I think that I’ll probably take tomorrow off to try and heal up a bit, but we’ll see what happens. If it seems like a good idea, I might go out for a light run to see if that helps me loosen up the groin a little. More likely is that I’ll just wait and do a light stretch on Thursday, take it relatively easy at ultimate, and then have several days to finish healing and get back to full strength. So until next time…

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

Taking the day off yesterday seemed to help quite a bit. I’m definitely suspecting that the groin injury was just a slight overextension of some sort that needed a bit of rest to recover. While it doesn’t quite feel fully healed, it’s definitely way better than it was yesterday. Anyway, went with the running and all sports mini-workouts for my pre-ultimate workout today. I was definitely feeling somewhat better… I actually followed the workouts this time, instead of modifying into free form, like I did on Tuesday. There was a lot of caution, but it wasn’t too bad. Ultimate was a bit of a bust… the thunderstorms that were predicted to be here all day finally decided to show up, unfortunately. There was a brief downpour shortly after we started playing that soaked the field. Everyone retreated to their cars for it, so we stayed dry (and away from the lightning). It cleared up after 10 minutes or so, and we came back out. However, the formerly dry field was now soaked, with puddles in some places in the middle. The game went on, but I didn’t end up playing a whole lot. I guess the storm just threw me off my rhythm. I did slip a little during one of the points, which caused me to notice the groin strain again, although it didn’t really do any damage. I only played a couple of points after that, and since the weather was again threatening, we wrapped it up about an hour earlier than usual. When I got home, I did the running and all sports workouts again, with the only modification being a substitution of backbend lunge for the downward dog/triangle pose sequence during all sports. I actually didn’t go all the way up for the backbend with the left leg forward, since I was getting a good stretch of the groin muscle with my hands on the knee, and didn’t want to overextend it. Overall, though, I feel like I’m definitely healing. I’ll probably take it fairly easy the rest of the weekend, although I’m going to try and get an abs workout in tomorrow, and maybe do a light stretching workout of some sort on Saturday, depending on how I feel. Hopefully taking it easy for a few more days will let me finish healing, and I’ll be ready to go again at full health next week.

Workout: Abs Conditioning: Pilates
Author: chaos

Got back into it with an abs pilates workout. It was okay… some good, some not as good. Things started off pretty well, I was feeling fairly strong. I really hit the rockers today… I practiced a couple earlier in the week, and I think that I understand them a little better now. The key for those is really the focus, I think. If I’m focusing well, they’re fairly easy. If I’m not, they don’t go so well. However, either through good technique or general fatigue, I had trouble with the series of five. I followed the modified version, but I still had to sit out the last five double leg raises. I’m going to have to start practicing those sometime when my abs aren’t already beat, and see if they’re really that hard. I don’t think they are. Picked up again after that, finishing off fairly strongly with the exception of the teaser. Actually, I think good focus is key there, as well. The first one really sucked, but then I started really concentrating, and the other ones were better. Not great, but better. My shoulder was okay for most of the time, although it clearly was feeling a bit of the effects of straightening all the way on a few exercises. Overall, though, things went reasonably well, and I think I’m about ready to really start getting back into the workouts, at least until I injure myself again.

Workout: Free Form
Author: chaos

Since I didn’t want to disturb the music, I decided to go for a free form workout today. I modeled the workout off of the py:stamina workout… it would have been modeled more closely, except I was having a hard time remembering exactly how it went, particularly the end section. However, I did slow the workout down quite a bit for my purposes. It went fairly well… I wouldn’t say that it felt wonderful, but it didn’t particularly hurt, either. I strained my shoulder a little bit again today, the same thing I did on Monday. So I just need to make sure that I don’t try overdoing it when I’m throwing for a little while. Avoiding pulling the disc, at least forehand, would probably be a good start. Anyway, I was pretty satisfied with the workout. I had an excellent tree pose to both sides, the best in a long time. Overall, I found that because there was a distraction in the room, I was forced to concentrate much harder, and that actually made the workout better. Not sure what I’ll go with tomorrow… I may take the day off, depending on how I’m feeling and what’s going on. Either way, I’ll probably go for another abs workout on Monday, and then get back to the ultimate workouts on Tuesday.

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

Well, ended up being lazy and taking yesterday off as well as Sunday. It probably wasn’t really necessary, or at least it probably wouldn’t have made a difference in terms of any injuries that are outstanding, but there you have it. That’s why I don’t take days off in general… it makes laziness too easy. Anyway, got ready for ultimate today with some light mini-workouts. Just went with running and all sports again… I was thinking about getting the swimming workout in as well, but wasn’t sure how my shoulder would handle the pushup pose transitions. That was probably the only negative thing about tossing the disc around over the weekend, it probably would have been better for my arm to have just taken the time off to heal. Anyway, was a little worried about the thunderstorms in the forecast as I headed out to ultimate, but they never materialized. It was a pretty good day, nice and warm, the first day that I’ve really felt like my muscles were in no danger of cramping or pulling. I mean, there’s always some danger, but normally it’s a very conscious thing… today it was finally warm enough that it wasn’t. Disappointingly, relatively few people showed up, so there were only a couple of subs, despite the nice day. The only reason this was particularly disappointing was that it meant the game ended with a lot of daylight left. But, I shouldn’t expect too much from this crowd, I suppose. Did a little light stretching afterwards, although I probably should have done more. I’ve been less consistent about it recently, which isn’t good. My shoulder and arm are aching somewhat now, which isn’t particularly good. I might have to consider missing a few days of ultimate at some point if this continues. Anyway, not much more to say, I’ll probably go for an abs workout of some kind tomorrow.