Of Awkwardness and Speed Skaters

Hello lovelies:

lol I’m back with another random blog title! It will all make sense in due time I swear!

I do hope all of you peeps have had a wonderful week thus far. Mine has actually been pretty nice. I haven’t been massively overworked which has given me plenty of time to be able to enjoy some quality puppy and Fiancé time – not to mention get my P90X workouts in!!!

 

“Operation Bring it!” – Day 4 – March 23rd, 2010

Now if you’re quick on the draw you noticed that I skipped a day. That’s because I was horribly exhausted on the 22nd (long court day) and couldn’t bring myself to do YogaX. I just wasn’t feeling it! So I made an executive decision and moved my rest day from the end of the week to the middle instead. My body was begging for a break and truth be told I think it allowed me to face the rest of the workouts that were to come.

Come the 23rd I was ready for my P90X so I popped my YogaX DVD into my player and got ready to ruuuuumble! Yogi style!

I had previously done this DVD in my hotel during my most recent travels, which meant I knew what to expect. And that was some serious awkwardness and borderline boredom. I really hate to say it but this is the only P90X DVD thus far that I really haven’t liked.

This workout is an hour and a half; which is a particularly excruciating length of time when you’re not down with what you’re doing. For about an hour you do the usual sun salutation type movements. Funny thing is I feel like there’s a ton of repetitive flow patterns and not enough power. I do Power Yoga (using Rodney Yee’s brilliant DVD) on a fairly regular basis and YogaX my friends isn’t power yoga. Yes I managed to feel uncomfortable but I don’t think that was due to some power style moves in there. Rather, I think the flows just don’t work sometimes. And then there are the times when you want to tell Tony Horton to move on already! But nope. He repeats things over. And over. And over. Again.

After an hour of flow type movements he tells you the worst is over. Then you move into half an hour of poses that you hold for long periods of time. I’m not used to that type of yoga so it’s an adjustment and it will take me a bit of time to get things working like clockwork. In the meantime my dancer will look none too graceful. Most of the movements are pretty Kosher and I managed to play along. That was until we hit about the last 10 minutes. That’s the time period where all the lovely DVD people get on the floor and proceed to contort into something I’d previously only seen done by Cirque de Soleil gymnasts. I tried to find a picture to show you what I meant but couldn’t – despite my creative Googling terms! lol Point is it feels uncomfortable on my neck and I don’t want to push it without supervision.

Overall I didn’t love this workout and I’m tempted to just do Power Yoga with Rodney Yee, on YogaX days!

“Operation Bring it!” – Day 4 – March 24th, 2010

This day was devoted to Back and Legs plus the now very familiar AbRipperX. Thankfully we were back to hour long workouts – and this one seemed to practically fly by!

I really enjoyed this DVD! It included a ton of variations on squats as well as lunges. I’d like to think they’re going to make me super bootylicious! lol It just so happens that my Hispanic genes managed to miss my butt region all together! lol

Seriously though this workout pushed me to keep on going and in the case of the evil wall squats to hold them as long as the peeps on the DVD. And by the end of it I felt really proud of myself!

One of the fantastic moves on this workout was called Super Skater. In it you attempt to mimic a speed skater by maintaining a quasi lunge in one leg and simultaneously moving your other leg back while moving your arms. This guy on YouTube does a pretty good of demonstrating the move. Although, really you should be aiming to have no toe tap in the back:

Before doing this move I had no idea that the speed skating motion could be so painful when repeated over and over again! Don’t believe me? Try it out for yourself! It hurts!!! And you can feel it working!!! One of my new favourites, pain notwithstanding. Bottom line on this move? Apolo Anton Ohno, I salute you! lol

Now before you say “But I have a bad knee! I can’t do this DVD!” let me tell you my background. Sure I’ve suffered many injuries in my day but amongst the worst are my knee and ankle injuries. I’ll probably share more on those injuries with you in the future but let’s just say my past fractured kneecap and my 2nd degree ankle ligament tear haven’t stopped me from doing this workout. Which is my way of saying “If I can do it, so can you!” Just make sure to rehab ahead of time.

Up for Today? KempoX – woohoo!!!