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Workout: Power Yoga: Stamina
Author: chaos

My schedule has gone completely haywire the last couple of days. My own fault, of course… I meant to cycle to something normal, and managed to blow right through it. I’m now attempting to cycle through again, but we’ll see if I manage to hold out for long enough to do that. It’s possible I’ll make it, since I did get a few hours last night, even if it was early. Well, not early relative to when I got up, but early relative to normal sleeping hours. Anyway. I decided to get some Stepmania and a workout in today, to start getting back into the groove. Unfortunately, I didn’t get all that much dancing in before I felt something in the right hamstring. I didn’t actually think it was serious, but I decided that it wasn’t worth risking it, so I stopped. I decided to go ahead and get in the yoga workout anyway, though. Went with py:stamina. It went fairly well… I didn’t have trouble getting into the poses. I could feel the hamstring a little bit, but I’m having a hard time telling if it’s really anything, or just fairly normal behavior that I’m currently especially sensitive to noticing. Anyway. Not quite sure when the next workout will be, but hopefully pretty soon. I think I’ll try some more Stepmania tomorrow, provided the leg seems recovered, which I expect it will. So quite likely then.

Workout: Power Yoga: Stamina
Author: chaos

Ended up taking yesterday as another day of rest. I felt something like a small pull in my right hamstring on Friday right at the end of ultimate, and it was causing me some pain the rest of the day when I moved it in certain ways, so I was a little concerned that it might take a little while to heal. Fortunately, it seems to have been a very minor problem, because I didn’t really notice it yesterday, and couldn’t feel it at all today. However, the muscle adjacent to my shin bone has been quite sore both yesterday and today, particularly the one on the right leg, which was aggravated by driving home yesterday, I think. Anyway, I thought about taking today off as well, but then decided to go ahead and get a light stretching workout in. Not too much to say about the workout itself… I tried to get a good stretch of my legs, and I think it was reasonable for that. I’m hoping that maybe after another week or so, I’ll stop being so sore from ultimate, and I’ll be able to get back to more complete workouts. I think that will probably be the case, since my quads seem to have recovered from Tuesday’s outing, and my shoulders aren’t really feeling sore anymore, either. I suspect that each muscle group will be sore for a few days after I use it the first time, but then should mostly be fine after that. I think the shin muscle problem didn’t appear on Tuesday because I didn’t have cleats, and thus wasn’t really cutting at all. Speaking of cleats, the new ones worked out quite well… by the middle of the game, they weren’t feeling overly tight at all, so I think they’ll be fine. I’ll probably try and get something a little more complete tomorrow, although I doubt I’ll make it all the way to a long workout. I might throw in a hip-opening workout tomorrow with whatever else I do, but we’ll see. I want to keep up with that, since my hip flexibility has been improving, and I’d like to continue that trend. Anyway, that’s all for now, hopefully I’ll actually get to something tomorrow, and start being a little less lazy about the workouts.

Workout: Power Yoga: Stamina
Author: chaos

Ended up deciding not to do any ab work tonight. I was in the mood for more Stepmania, so I went with that. Had a pretty good night… passed a few 9-footers that I hadn’t passed before. And even had fun, for the most part. Just went with a light workout afterwards to stretch out, particularly my calves. I’m pretty close to the end of my “day”, so I’m feeling pretty tired. I was staying fairly focused, I think, because of the fatigue. Sometimes that works to my advantage, sometimes not. Overall, the workout was decent, and a fairly good stretch. I’ll quite likely go for an abs workout of some sort tomorrow, possibly with the hip opening workout.

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

I went with the abs yoga workout that I was originally thinking about for tonight. It was somewhat tougher than I expected it to be… my lower abs were definitely feeling the burn, as it were. Good to see the pilates is at least making the muscles work. I got through without any real trouble, although my form wasn’t quite as tight as I’d like. My focus was a little weak as well, although I’m not sure that it’s been all that great at any point lately. I haven’t been paying enough attention to it, certainly. After the workout, I was a bit uncertain as to what I wanted to do. I was feeling rather hungry, so just eating was an option. I had originally thought about getting the hip opening workout in, but after a bit of reflection I decided that I wanted to do that after a Stepmania workout, and since I was planning on taking the night off from that, hip opening wasn’t happening. In the end I decided to just go with a stamina workout, because I wanted something fairly light. I considered just doing nothing, but the abs workout felt really light by itself, so I felt the need to get something else in. That workout was decent as well, although my legs were feeling somewhat stiff. That was another part of the reason I wanted to get something else in, try to work the stiffness out of my legs a little bit. The stiffness is that somewhat unusual stiffness that I was resting a week or so ago… I think it’s related to stretching more than I usually can, or something. I don’t know that it’s a bad thing, really… quite possibly means that my flexibility is increasing. Still, I plan on continuing to monitor the situation, make sure things seem okay. That’s all for tonight… not sure what I’ll do tomorrow… possibly pilates.

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

I decided to try something a little bit different today. I started off my exercise with the pilates intermediate mat workout. That went pretty well, although I could certainly feel it in the abs. I’ll probably actually need to take a day or two off from abs work pretty soon to let them recover a bit. Possibly after tomorrow. I was pretty happy with the workout, though… felt like I did a pretty good job of staying in form. I still don’t like the leg kicks much, though. Anyway, after that I did some Stepmania. Wasn’t the greatest of sessions, but not too bad. Passed Dynamite Rave, which is a nine-footer, only the second one I’ve managed to pass, and definitely harder than the other one I’ve passed. After that, I did py:stamina for a stretching and cooling workout. I think it worked fairly well as that… notably, I did feel a little bit tired during it, which certainly isn’t from the workout itself. Nothing major, but noticeable. Anyway… I think I’ll probably go in for a little bit of slow work tomorrow, maybe yoga abs and YfS:s1, or something like that. Quite possibly take the day off from Stepmania, I think my toes could use a bit of healing time.

Workout: Power Yoga: Stamina, Power Yoga: Strength
Author: chaos

I was definitely feeling better today. Not quite back to full health, but getting closer. However, I did push myself a little hard yesterday with both the yoga workout and Stepmania after that, so I decided to go ahead and take it a little easier today. Not too much, though… ended up going with the combination of stamina and strength. It felt pretty good, overall… I had fairly decent focus for the most part, which definitely helped. I was feeling a little bit tired by the end of the strength workout, but not terribly so. It’s possible that I even could have done the flexibility workout, but since the point was for me to take it a little easier tonight, that didn’t seem like a particularly wise idea. Really, I think it would have been a bit much anyway… I think my technique would have started to suffer by the end. Anyway, since I seem to have been getting steadily better over the past couple of days, I’m hoping that I’ll pretty much be back to full strength tomorrow. I’ll most likely try to do pilates abs and hip opening again, if that’s the case, since it’s been a little longer than I like to go since I’ve last done abs. Held off today because the stomach is still a tiny bit off, so hardcore abs seemed less than ideal. Anyway, I’m sure I’ll be getting something in tomorrow, so until then…

Workout: Power Yoga: Stamina
Author: chaos

I was originally intending on getting to a workout much earlier in the evening, but unexpectedly had some guests over. Because of that, it ended up being fairly late before I was able to do a workout. I could have just skipped the workout, but I really didn’t feel like doing that, so I just went with the light stamina workout again. I would have rather done something more challenging, but decided to go ahead and save that for tomorrow, but to get the workout in tonight anyway. Was also going to do some Stepmania, but I’m going to have to pass on that. Going to keep this short, not much to say about the workout, it was fairly easy. Reasonable focus. I’m glad it was pretty easy, though, there have been times when I’ve been coming back from injuries or whatever that it’s seemed a little bit more challenging, so hopefully I’m not doing too badly conditioning-wise. That’s all for now, hopefully a strength workout at the very minimum tomorrow.

Workout: Power Yoga: Stamina
Author: chaos

Had a bit of a hiatus there, largely caused to a flu-like sickness that left me pretty well exhausted for most of a week. I meant to get going again yesterday, but didn’t quite end up getting to it. While I’ve largely recovered from the illness, I still have a tendency to get sleep more often than I would otherwise, or at least need more of that sleep. Or perhaps just have the need to go to sleep, which I can usually ignore for quite a while.
Anyway, decided that with all the time off since the last workout, it would be best if I started out with something light as I try to get back into it. The workout went pretty well, I was happy with it. Light, but that’s what I wanted. The good thing about all the time I took off is that my body did manage to heal up somewhat. My knee is feeling better, although still not back to 100% by any means, and I’ve gotten to the point where I’m not taping my pinkie all the time, and I’m trying to start regaining mobility in it. I think the workout today was a bit of a stretch in terms of what it was happy with, but that’s something I’m just going to have to deal with. Might do an abs workout tomorrow, depending on whether or not I’m overly sore from today’s workout. If I’m not too sore, I’ll probably do something a little more strenuous, like one of the strength workouts, maybe. Hopefully now that I’ve started up again, I’ll ramp up pretty quickly and get serious with these workouts for the next few months. Anyway, until tomorrow…

Workout: Power Yoga: Stamina
Author: chaos

Continued with the trend of light workouts today. I did do the full workout today, just working around the bad finger. I’m not sure this is the greatest of workouts for my knee, though… I might stop doing it until the knee is a little further along in the healing process. It felt okay during everything, but it also felt like it was right on the edge a few times, and I think healing might be better without getting that close to the edge. Not much else to say about the workout… trying to keep up my focus. Today was okay on that front… I’ve had worse, certainly. Played a little Stepmania before the workout… I’m starting to make that a habit, which is good. I need to get better, and start working myself harder as well, to make sure I stay in shape for ultimate season. It seems like the distant future, but it’s really only a little over 2.5 months, now. Anyway… may take tomorrow off, since I think everything might benefit from the rest. Then again, I might not, since I seem to be in a mood to do the workouts currently, and I hate to let that go to waste. We’ll see what happens, I guess.

Workout: Power Yoga: Stamina
Author: chaos

Well, so much for playing a couple of days of ultimate unscathed. On Wednesday, I managed to dislocate the pinkie on my left hand. That’s not the hand that I jammed the pinkie on before, for those playing at home. What this probably means is that once it recovers somewhat (it’s currently still in the turning colors stage), I’ll have matching hands again, but not quite in the way that I was hoping for. So that’s rather annoying. On the plus side, much like the other hand injury didn’t really get in the way of yoga, I don’t think this one will, either. With that in mind, I decided to go ahead and try a light stamina workout today. It went fairly well… modified side stretch in the style of the highest YCfA modification, but that was pretty much it. The finger wasn’t entirely happy, but not terribly unhappy, either. Before the workout, played some Stepmania for the first time in a while. Didn’t play too long, because the feet are again unused to playing, so I didn’t want to cause them to blister. I’ll hopefully start playing again more often… that’s the plan, anyway. So, while this new injury will slow my return to full yoga a little bit, I think it’ll probably only be a week or so before it’s ready to start doing serious workouts.

Workout: Power Yoga: Stamina
Author: chaos

Wanted to keep things short today, so just went for a stamina workout. My hamstrings were a little sore from yesterday, and my upper chest is still a bit fatigued from the continual workouts, although it’ll probably recover by Thursday, since I think I’ll probably do an abs or pilates workout tomorrow. Going to keep this entry short, lots of writing to do tonight if I want to make the deadline. Hopefully this experience will help me with the rest of the process, since I’d really rather not keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

Workout: Power Yoga: Stamina
Author: chaos

Decided to change things up a little bit and go with the stamina workout to warm up today. No particular reason, other than not feeling like doing the mini-workouts. Of course, I did somewhat forget to factor the ankle into that equation, but it ended up not being a big deal. I felt it twinge once, and just avoided pressing back into it as hard as I normally would in the standing poses. Not too much else to say, other than that the pushups felt pretty good. Maybe I’ll go for a strength workout tomorrow or something. My muscles have been feeling a little tired the last couple of workouts, but not so much tonight. I think it’s probably dietary… I’ve been running a little low on calories the past couple of days, I think. Anyway, ultimate was again fun tonight, although a little cold. Temperatures were hanging out in the mid to upper 40s… some people out there claim that it’s beautiful, but if you ask me, it’s rather chilly. You certainly wouldn’t find me out there on a day in midsummer with those temperatures. Okay, you probably would, but I admit to being crazy. Anyway, had a decent turnout, playing either fives or sixes for most of the night. It was fairly short, though… the sun is just going down so early now, and it having been overcast all day certainly doesn’t help. Oh well, next week is the end of the season, so it won’t be so much of a concern after that. I think I managed to avoid any further damage to the finger, although I did scrape up my forearm a bit. Just a flesh wound, though. Anyway, hopefully will get something in tomorrow, perhaps not too late in the evening.

Workout: Power Yoga: Stamina, Yoga Conditioning for Athletes: Mini-workouts
Author: chaos

It was a nice day for ultimate, particularly for late September. Temperatures in the upper 60s, sunny… not much to complain about. I prefer playing in warmer weather, of course, but that’s hard to get this time of year. Anyway, before ultimate I did the stamina workout. I wasn’t quite feeling the groove of the workout, although I think I was getting through it pretty well. I think I was just working harder at it than I needed to. But I was pretty happy with my stretching, so it was fine. To go with the great weather, I had a pretty good day. My long throws weren’t quite as on as I’d like, but that was about it. Had a bunch of nice defensive plays, and my short throws were pretty much spot on, so definitely not complaining. The only downside was I slightly mistimed or misjudged a disc that I was going up to catch, and ended up catching it with my hands and my face, particularly my nose. Had a bit of a bloody nose, and it’s somewhat tender now… probably will be for a couple of days. I also got a tiny cramp in my left calf on the last point of the night, although it did go away immediately when I stood up (when it cramped, I was doing a crouching run to make a shoestring catch). Afterward, decided a little more stretching wouldn’t be a bad thing, so I did the running and all sports mini-workouts. It’s possible I should have focused a little more on things emphasizing downward dog, since that’s a good calf stretch, but I didn’t. Overall, it was a pretty good day, and hopefully will motivate me to get going on some of this stuff that I need to get done.

Workout: Power Yoga: Stamina, Yoga Conditioning for Athletes: Mini-workouts
Author: chaos

As planned, I went in for the py:stamina workout before ultimate today. Nothing too exciting about it, just a change of pace from the mini-workouts. Ultimate was pretty good today… we had 17 at one point, which was fairly impressive, considering both the relative cold and the fact that it was windy. Anyway, people were playing hard, and it was a lot of fun. I almost feel like the later in the season we get, the more fun the games have been. Kind of weird, but it does seem to be a trend lately. Or maybe it’s just because we’re all coming to appreciate the fact that the season will be ending soon, and thus want to get the most out of our playing time. Whatever the case, it’s a nice thing. Because of the cold, though, I was worried about my muscles tightening up afterwards, which they have a tendency to do. So after I got home, I decided to do a few of the mini-workouts to stretch out. Went with swimming to make sure the muscles were warm enough, and then finished with all sports. It was nice, although I’m not sure that swimming really warmed the muscles up quite as much as I’d have liked. Notably, I got in the post ultimate stretch when it seemed like I needed it, so perhaps my slacking off on that hasn’t been as bad as I thought. That is to say, I have been slacking on it, but maybe it wasn’t such a big deal, since the stretching wasn’t as necessary. Anyway… I think I’ll probably go for a pilates workout tomorrow, as long as I can motivate myself for it.

Workout: Power Yoga: Stamina
Author: chaos

In the spirit of being bored with doing the same workouts all the time, I went with the stamina workout before ultimate today. Strangely, I found it to be a little bit taxing, although I think it was mostly because I didn’t have the rhythm of the workout. The really odd part about that being that I couldn’t seem to get into the rhythm, either, throughout the course of the workout. Other than that, though, it went fine… I feel like I’m starting to regain a bit of my strength. I’m starting to look forward to the off season a little more, at least in that I’ll have more time to devote to the yoga practice. Speaking of the off season, ultimate didn’t actually end up happening today… conditions similar to those of two weeks ago with prevailed, with similar results. It’s looking like the Monday session might be done for the year, but we’ll see what happens. That’s somewhat unfortunate, since I enjoy the Monday session, but the numbers haven’t been there lately. Anyway, hopefully will get to play tomorrow, we had good turnout last week even though the weather was threatening, so hopefully we’ll get more of the same tomorrow. Until then…

Workout: Power Yoga: Stamina
Author: chaos

Went in for my third consecutive non-ultimate related workout today. I don’t remember the last time I did that, but I think it was probably right before the first injuries of the season. Unquestionably I’ve had trouble with motivating myself to get workouts in for the past month and a half or so, and spent enough time being injured before that that days off seemed more advisable. At any rate, I’m feeling pretty good about this start to September, since once I start rolling on something like this, it’s fairly easy for me to keep going… starting is always the hard part. Injuries are the thing most likely to derail me again, which is certainly a valid concern, with 2 months of the outdoor ultimate season left. But I’m hoping to keep them down, since I’ve been doing better about that since coming back from vacation. As the weather becomes less predictable, there will probably be more days we don’t play as well, which should also help limit injuries, or at least injury potential. Anyway, the workout today was fairly decent… these last few workouts have certainly been tougher than they should be, but clearly while I’m in pretty decent cardio shape right now, my yoga shape isn’t quite as good. With luck, I’ll get them both to a good state by the end of the ultimate season, and then it’ll just be a matter of maintaining my cardio conditioning over the winter, since I’m sure I’ll be going hard at yoga once the ultimate season ends. Just a few thoughts on where I am and what’s to come… either a stretching workout tonight before ultimate, or something a little more challenging later tonight if ultimate doesn’t happen.

Workout: Power Yoga: Stamina
Author: chaos

Decided to try something a little bit more challenging (but only a little bit) and do the py:stamina workout tonight for my ultimate stretching. The last time I tried to do this workout, I only made it a few minutes in before my wrist protested something, and I switched up. Since my wrist has largely recovered at this point, I figured that I’d probably be able to make it through. And that was successful… the tendon pull that I did yesterday hurt some, but certainly not any worse than running around on it. The wrist was okay, although I’m still being a little cautious with it. I’d really prefer not to go back to having it be a constant problem for workouts. The workout was a little more tiring than it should have been, but given how much I’ve been working out lately, not terribly surprising. I was just glad to make it through. Ultimate was fun, although I was still hobbling around for the most part. I may take Thursday off, if my leg doesn’t feel considerably better by then… I’d rather let it heal back to at least the state it was in before than keep hobbling around all the time. Only did a little stretching afterwards, because the mosquitos were coming out and they seemed hungry. The plan is to get an abs workout in tomorrow, and for a change, I think I’ll actually manage to follow that plan. So 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: Power Yoga: Flexibility, Power Yoga: Stamina
Author: chaos

Something a little different today… decided to hold of on a regular full length workout, and instead do a few from the py:complete workout disc. I wasn’t really in the mood to do the strength workout, so I went with stamina and flexibility. I’m fairly impressed with the amount that my stamina has increased in the past few weeks, despite a less rigorous schedule than I had originally envisioned. I went through the two workouts without any trouble, hardly even breaking a sweat. My biggest problem is that I need to clean my mat… it’s getting a little bit slippery. Which makes it hard to hold downward dog, sometimes, because my hands keep slipping. Other than that, things went pretty well. Tree pose was fine today… it’s been a little odd lately. Sometimes I have no problem with it, sometimes I really can’t do it at all. Doesn’t make much sense, especially since that was one of my better poses, way back when I started. Anyway. Still hoping to find a regular schedule one of these days, but I’ll probably have to wait a little longer. So until next time…

Workout: Power Yoga: Stamina
Author: chaos

I have to confess that I really just did this workout in order to keep the daily workout thing going. For whatever reason, I wasn’t particularly in the mood to be doing yoga. I really think I need to start to develop some sort of schedule, just to make sure I get the workouts in at a decent time. Actually, I was thinking about doing intermediate yoga tonight, but it ended up getting late, and that workout still involves a bit of thumping at this point, so I decided to hold off yet again. I really do want to get it in sometime soon, though. Anyway, I was feeling pretty uninspired about the workout. I thought about doing a free form workout, and originally started that way, but it didn’t feel right. In the end, I decided upon a simple py:stamina workout.
I think the biggest thing I got out of the workout is that there really isn’t much reason for me to do it, at least not by itself. I can do all of the same exercises in my free form workout, and I’ll do them more completely. About the only thing that I’m really missing are the backbends. Perhaps because I was feeling a little bit detached from the process, I was analyzing the video a little more. It seems like Rodney was trying to cram in an introduction to a whole lot of poses, while still maintaining a short workout. It ends up making the whole thing feel rushed. And just too light for the amount of movement… I didn’t even break a sweat, although the relatively cool room temperature undoubtedly contributed to that. Anyway, we’ll see if I remember about this workout, but if I do, I’m unlikely to return to it as a solo workout in the future… I see it more in combination with either strength or flexibility (or both), or potentially an abs yoga routine on a light workout day.