The Morning Is A Special Time

Whenever my training transitions towards endurance goals the first lifestyle change I make doing yoga first thing in the morning. After long days in the mountains nothing works out the kinks and re-sets my mental state as well as 15-30 minutes of restorative yoga as part of the awakening process.

It’s something I’m sure would be good to do all the time but I always get out of the habit in winter and, especially since its filled with a lot of strength training, come spring I’m always fairly stiff. I do some amount of yoga all year and stretch after training sessions but there’s something about the ritual of morning yoga that helps my mindset switch into another gear.

The change is also physical. Yoga helps your body balance out, especially when it’s taking a beating getting used to transitioning for hour long gym sessions to many hours of pounding under the sun in the backcountry. Done first things in the morning it sets the stage for another hard day. When I wake up I’ll often feel stiff and sore. My breathing might be slightly labored and my mind clogged. A few minutes into yoga, without fail, I my breathing relaxes, head clears, and muscles come back to life. The rest of the day is always improved.

I’ve been doing this long enough that I generally make up my own routines. But once in a while, like when I’m first getting back into the habit, I’ll pop in the old go-to video Rodney Yee’s AM Yoga (note objective tone of ‘the Dope since Yee is not one of our trainers). Yee is the kind of calming yoga teacher you want first thing in the morning. His serene demeanor, the faux native-something or other music, the Utah desert setting and the decidedly hippie tone is a perfect symbiosis.

“Morning is a special time,” says Yee as the prelude to his intro that I often still listen to even though I know it by heart. It’s over-the-top, sure, but if it can calm to crazy cattle dogs in the morning I’m sure it’ll work on any human.

It Ain't Over Til It's Over

Alizée Dufraisse: La Reina Mora 8c+/9a FFA from Prana Living on Vimeo

Today’s Psyche presents the definition of “it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” This girl is gone. Outta there. Her body is convulsing, her elbows are chicken-winging and her ability to control the holds is shot. It seems unbelievable that her feet can stay on such small holds shaking the way they are. When you’re belaying someone who looks like this you’re well into catch mode. Yet she somehow finds a way to hang on, which is probably why she climbs harder than almost everyone. The fight she shows is some of the most impressive climbing I've ever seen.

You have to wade through a little bit of boring/envy-ness to get there (I want to spend 3 months in Spain) but, hey, it’s a Prana vid and if they’re going to produce stuff this cool you can cut em some slack for a little yoga promo. Plus, yoga is one of the best exercises for (insert almost anything here) so it might not even be staged. Yoga makes us better at physical stuff. Period.

Here’s a little background: Alizée is one of the new school of strong youngsters taking grades to a new level. This is one of the hardest ascents done by a female, which isn’t to say it’s a cake walk for the top men. In fact, a recent Psyche shows Dani Andrada, one of the world’s best, falling all over this same route.

Psyched on Yoga?

If you’re like me, 2012 has started in a rudely-hectic manner. Maybe it’s the triple whammy of condensed work weeks but, however you stack it up, I’m in need of some early-week Psyche to help both calm my mind and get after it physically. Henceforth I present yoga by Equinox.

Think of this next time Yoga X is kicking your butt, and anytime you doubt the ability of yoga to make you strong, fit, or look good. Think of how effortlessly Briohny Smyth makes, well, everything look-—including some very burly movements. I’m pretty sure I’ve increased my strength, balance, and fluidity just by watching. Reminds me of my friend Micah's comment on the merits of regular yoga practice for rock climbing, "yoga is like cheating for climbers."

Morning Yoga

I re-injured my back mountain biking a couple of months back and have been trying to play through it. Finally, alas, I’ve been forced to deal with it head on and take some time off. Well, not off exactly, but focused. And the primary point of this focus has been on morning yoga.

Yoga and stabilization exercises were the cornerstone of my rehab last year. A year after the injury I felt as though I was 90% back. After my Mexico trip in March I allowed my focus to wane a little. I was still doing both but not with the same fervor. I wrenched my back a bit in a small crash but it was pain that I could deal with so I kept trying to perform and ramp up my biking mileage. The pain, however, has steadily increased to the point where it’s no longer possible that it’s residual. Something new is wrong.

My standard policy on most injuries is to rehab first and see doctors later. My theory is that the rehab is going to happen, one way or another, so you might as well try it first. This keeps me (and clients) out of the doctors’ office 9 times in 10. After a week it seems to be going well again.

I hadn’t been totally avoiding yoga but I hadn’t been doing actual classes or videos. As a trainer I usually don’t need these things. I know what I want to do and, in fact, almost always train harder when I’m alone and not doing a video. Probably due to my sports background I’m more intense by myself. My sets are more focused. I also concentrate better and, thus, recover quicker between exercises. This competitive nature has the opposite effect on yoga, where intensity is not the objective. Classes and videos slow me down, reduce the intensity, and increase its effectiveness. A lot.

Now, like all those months when I was acutely injured, each day begins with a yoga class (in video or in person). I’m going to keep this up until the pain is gone. I’m so much better than I was a week ago that I find it hard to conceptualize how I went so many years not doing yoga at all.

pic: romney in the canyonlands

Yoga

I suck at yoga but that hasn’t stopped me from trying to get better each day over the last couple of months. Today, while trying to follow Gillian Clark during Pure & Simple Yoga I was again reminded of how bad I am at it. The upside is that in yoga it just doesn’t matter one bit. Ego aside, yoga makes me feel good and that’s all that matters.

While I’m bad at it, I’m definitely progressing. I’ve been asked to list just what I’ve been doing, so here you go. I should qualify this with the back story. I have a ruptured L5S1 disc, which caused sciatic nerve damage. From Jan-June, I could do very little stretching and no forward bending. When I began doing yoga in July, it had to start slow and easy.

I began with Rodney Yee’s Back Care Yoga. This is a one hour session that is broken down into three sections: flexibility, strengthening, and restorative poses. Restorative poses, essentially, use gravity to slowly stretch muscles. These are EASY. So I began using this 20 minute segment as my default practice, while pushing a little harder on days I felt good.

Once I assessed that I could do this without damaging my back, I began starting each day with one of Rodney Yee’s 20 minute sessions from AM Yoga. Yee is one of the old guard of the video yoga movement. He’s an excellent teacher and these videos are perfect for anyone looking to begin with gentle yoga.

Next, Romney bought me (well, us) the Athlete’s Guide To Yoga. This is also a gentle practice that assumes most of your training is done elsewhere. Since most of mine is, it’s great. The instructor, Sage Roundtree, is a little Berkeley-esque for my tastes but she’s thorough and I’ve come to really like this video. The many short routines are programmable for a myriad of workout options.

A mixture of these three videos has been the cornerstone of my practice, which until recently had been entirely focused on rehabilitation.

The progress I’ve made has caused me to move yoga up on my workout priorities. Now I often replace other workouts, even riding or running, with yoga. I figure that I can get that fitness back quickly anyway, so I should focus on the thing that will increase my ability in those areas to improve beyond where they were when I get back to them. This has necessitated a need to increase the intensity of my yoga practice.

For more workout oriented yoga, I’ve been using Clark’s Pure & Simple Yoga (part of the Yoga Booty Ballet series), Chalene Johnson’s Dynamic Flow Yoga (part of the Chalene Extreme series), and Tony Horton’s One on One yogas and recovery workouts. None of these are 90X-ian in their severity but more balanced practices and much better suited to my days where there will almost always be another workout outside. I am about to start adding Yoga X into the schedule, even if just to gauge how I’ve improved, since for years that was the only yoga workout I did. For me, however, the strength aspects of yoga are not my goals. I’m much better at these anyway. My goals are range of motion increase, improved balance and body awareness.

Neither Chalene or Tony are yoga instructors. While this probably makes their style hard for traditional yoga-ites to stomach, it’s likely very appealing to many who are turned off by the historical mumbo-jumbo and just want a workout. They both have a comical style, which you can see here if this link is still working for "Patience Hummingbird." Gillian’s approach is far more traditional. Her knowledge and passion for yoga is unbridled. She makes me want to get better at yoga.

So far, I think the adding daily yoga has been one of my better athletic decisions. It may not help my ability to suffer through the night on some endurance quest (though it may and certainly won’t hurt), but it’s definitely going to help me age with less pain, and it will help my climbing. As my friend Micah, an avid yoga practitioner, said, “for climbing, yoga is like cheating.”

pic: from sonnietrotter.com

Remaking The Body

“You’re talkin’ about the Body, Jerry. That’s a fight you can’t win.”-Kramer

There are many clichés about how you’re not able to change the talent you’re born with but, in my latest round of self experimentation, that’s exactly what I’m trying to do. With my epic endeavors on hold for a time, my focus is on attempting to extend my flexibility and range-of-motion beyond where they’ve ever been.

This isn’t exactly an attempt to discredit sports science. It’s not like I’m trying to increase my VO2/max from 60 to 80 or do any number of things that are, indeed, impossible. But there are those who believe that you can’t alter your body type at all, especially as you age. Since I’ve already trained people to do this (myself included) I know that they’re wrong. But I’ve never trained anyone my age or older to do it, so I’m using my forced down time to challenge another human performance theory.

It’s not exactly down time, mind you. I can do plenty of exercise. But with my back still recovering I can’t push my envelope the way in which I’m accustomed. In order to keep my body calm and under control I need a new test to focus on. Increasing flexibility requires elongating muscle fibers, pulling the actin and myosin filaments apart. Contracting the muscles, especially over the time it takes to cover ultra distances (my thing) bunches them together. With no (or at least less) mega distance endeavors on my plate it’s a good time to work on flexibility training to the point that I can finally push beyond the usual goal, which is just to get my muscles back to normal.

Increased range of motion is a whole different challenge because it requires some structural change and the patience to work through physical limitations that have come about through a lifetime of athletic injuries. I was born with poor range of motion, as was my entire family. Even my brother, who has been practicing yoga for more than 20 years, only has average range of motion. So my goal with this experiment isn’t to get on stage with Cirque du Soliel. It’s to increase my range of motion beyond what it’s ever been. This will allow increases in athletic performance and give me a larger buffer against injuries, allowing me to do deeper during my epic adventures.

Two weeks of morning yoga, which has been mainly focused on back recovery, has already seen my flexibility return to where it was pre-injury. Given that I haven’t been able to fully bend forward since December, that’s two weeks to make up for seven months. And since I’ve got to lay off mega challenges until, at minimum, early next year, it should be interesting to see what I’m able to accomplish by then.