March 25:
60 Days of HIIT:
daily crow:
- crow to crane, attempt at one-legged
running:
hiking: 9 km with Shelby
The temperature warmed up this day. We hit double digits at one point. Didn't feel like it though, due to a strong and cold wind. No ducks on the pond this day, but Shelby did see her friends Randy and Stella in the park behind the school, plus her friend Buddy, of course, as we were heading home. A guy out walking past the end of our street saw Shelby and Buddy cuddling and said, "Now, that's something you don't see every day." And then he came over and gave Shelby a treat. She liked that. So he gave her another one. (Poor Buddy. The man did not have any cat treats.)
It was cold again by nightfall, but Shelby and I still went out for our bedtime walk and did another 3km at that point.
You will note from my activity list above that I have finally dropped the Power Hold Challenge from my list. Let me explain:
When I had access to the online YTT this past weekend, I skimmed through ALL of the content. I could not watch all of the videos, of course. (Although I did watch a fair number of them, thanks to the option of viewing everything at 2x the recording speed.) But I loaded up every page that listed videos (over 100 for the 300 hr. teacher training, plus another 40 or so for the Transform Your Practice program. I didn't learn much in my 200 hr. teacher training. (Not because it wasn't a good program. It was. But I've been practising yoga for over a quarter century, have taught yoga in the past, and have done a lot of self-directed study on topics related to yoga, fitness, and instructing. There's not a lot being taught in YTTs that I'm not already familiar with.) I expected the 300 hr. training to be more of the same. And it was. However, reviewing the materials helped to remind me of what I love about fitness training. And what I don't love. And this prompted me to review my current training goals and set some new ones.
Now it's time to talk about the elephant in the room: push-ups.
Ah, the dreaded push-up. You are all familiar with my love/hate relationship with the beast. I respect push-ups. I understand their value as a compound upper body strength-training exericse. And I can do them. I can pretty much always drop and do a set of 5 full push-ups or so on any given day at any time (unless I'm wearing clothes I don't want to mess up, or the ground cover is something I don't want to put my hands on). But ten? If I've been training my push-ups consistently, I can usually do ten. If I haven't, I cannot. And that makes me feel wimpy.
I have for a long time now harboured the fantasy that, if I trained for it consistently, I could achieve my push-up century. And the truth is: I probably could. But that little "if" word in there is the kicker, isn't it? The reality is that I
don't train for high volume push-ups consistently. Because I don't
like training for high volume push-ups. When was the last time I actually completed a day of the Power Hold Challenge? You'd need to scroll back pages in this log to find out! And Power Hold only calls for 3 sets of push-ups every other day.
Doing PH I got up to, I think, 14 reps in my first set. I am a long way away from a push-up century! And I am already consistently failing to train for it because the thought of getting out of my chair to do even those first 14 reps is just too gruesome. It's not just hard work. It's
boring hard work. It's also work that risks injury because training for high volume runs counter to training for good form. (No, I know it doesn't
have to. But we're trying to be honest here. And I know myself pretty well.) If I'm already resistant to and bored with the training volume required for me to achieve 14 push-ups in one set, how bored and unhappy would I be with the training volume required to get up to 100?
Also: what is the purpose of achieving a push-up century? To be able to boast that I did it? So what. It's not as if I would maintain the ability to do it. (There is absolutely
zero chance I would keep up with the training volume necessary for me to maintain the ability to complete a push-up century long term. I know this unequivocally.)
In thinking about all of this, I took a step back and considered other training modalities. Ones that--unlike push-ups--I actually enjoy. Like running. My first fitness love, the sport I have had the most success in over the years, and something I still enjoy and am still good at. I have been nationally-ranked as a runner. I have competed internationally. I have racked up so many running medals over the years (medals for winning--I don't care about finisher medals and have never collected those) that I threw them all out because they were just too much weight to keep carting around with me everytime I moved house. And yet I have never completed a marathon.
A lot of people don't understand this. I used to train with a running group in London that included runners of all levels from first-time couch-to-5Kers to competitive marathon runners. And nobody--nobody--could understand why I was not one of the competitive marathon runners. Why not? Because I was
good at running 5Ks.
Almost without exception the couch-to-5Kers in my old running group would complete their first 5K--often with a time slower than it would take me to walk 5K--and then immediately sign up for a 10K. If they stuck with their training long enough to complete that, the next year they'd be training for a half-marathon. And me? I'd still be signing up for the 5s. Even though I was the fastest woman in the training group and also faster than most of the men.
My training comrades did not understand this. When I told them, "I'm just not interested in running marathons," their eyes would bug out of their heads as if I'd just sprouted antennae.
The thing is: I've been running for a very long time. I ran competitively at a high level for several years too. I know how much work it took to get as good as I did at the 3 and 5K distances I was competing in back then. I know how much work it would take to actually get good at running marathons. And I know that I don't want to put in the time to do it. (Nor do I have any interest in paying the hefty entry fee for a marathon to jog/walk one slowly. I could slap on a pair of shoes and go outside right now and walk 26.2 miles today, for free. That's not a challenge for me.)
I
love running. I very much hope I will one day again be able to afford to invest enough time in it to get really good at running 5Ks once more. And yet I have zero interest in running a marathon.
So why do I want to complete a push-up century when I don't even like push-ups?
Right.
I don't.
Alright then. Back to the YTT materials:
The reason they got me thinking about all of this is because the training videos included a lot of content on
Crow Pose (Kakasana) and
Crane Pose (Bakasana) and some of the fun and cool and beautiful transitions one can potentially do into and out of these poses:
And how Crow and Crane utilise all of the same muscles as push-ups do (and then some). And how (unlike push-ups) I actually really enjoy practising Crow and Crane. And while I'm not at all interested in training for ever higher volumes of work, I am very much interested in training to be able to do some of the transitions demonstrated in the video above. And how that sort of training, with a focus on strength and technique, is both very much what interests me and what is far less likely to lead to injury than training for high volume. And how I've been hesitant to add yoga back into my training right now because of my impending loss of workout space and not wanting to add any more things into my life right now that will just be more things I'll lose when that happens,, but Crow and Crane are poses I can practise within a very small amount of space (less space than is required for push-ups). And how all of the above will make it so much easier for me to do Crow and Crane pose training work right now than push-ups and also persist with this work into the years to come and therefore derive long-term benefits from it.
And the best choice for me became obvious.
So Power Hold is out. And Daily Crow is in.
Now let's have some fun!
writing:
new fiction words: 0
fiction YTD: 53,291
story-a-week challenge: 10 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 10 of 54 completed
new consumable words: 816
consumable YTD: 106,404
target YTD for 2024 words a day in 2024: 172,040
deficit: 65,636
French: CBC Gem
GOBOT
SOOT:
GBOT
Streaks:
Consecutive days of working out: 142
Consecutive days of French study: 1224
Consecutive days of SOOT: 1
Consecutive days of GBOT: 1
Also this day: I messaged my friend (the one who will be keeping Shelby and me off the streets when we lose our current home). She helped me to get my head on straight re: the dysfunction within my family of origin. Also: we made plans to get together one day next month and then again in May for some nature hikes, and we also made plans to attend a
Boreal concert in May. My long, dark, winter of isolation is drawing to an end.
Here it's from extreme to extreme. Up to 42 in summer and as low as -9 in winter.
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