Wow, Tuesday evening I went and did something I haven’t done since I was a scrawny young man in my early twenties – I went to a yoga class.
Now yoga is something I’m quite a believer in because it has helped me out in terms of fixing my body up after all my car accidents before, and with my health and weight currently spiraling out of control anyway, I may as well give it a shot again to try and sort out and strengthen my lower back that is struggling to maneuver all these extra kilos of mine around!
Luckily I saw that our Virgin Active offers a couple of Yoga classes during the week, with the only evening class being on Tuesdays at 18:30 and after oohing and ahing about it for a couple of weeks now, I finally hitched up my briefs and made my grand appearance (making sure to go half an hour before the class started for a quick cycle, just to limber up for class – don’t want to look like a completely stiff idiot you know!)
The instructor that handles the classes is a lady by the name of Beryl and I was quite pleased to find that unlike the hugely popular katabox class on a Monday evening, yoga is a far less supported activity meaning that there was loads of space for me to find a spot towards the back and set my nifty little blue sponge mat down.
I was quite pleased with myself when we started up and I recognized quite a few of the movements from my old yoga days (though with slightly different and more colourful names now), but I was less than pleased by the fact that A) I am nowhere near as supple as what I used to be, B) my stomach keeps blocking all my stretch attempts and C) my fair heaviness plays hell on my arms even in a simple stretch like the dog position!
Anyway, Beryl’s class is pretty simple to follow and she goes along at a fairly relaxed and smooth pace, but I must say that the overall choreography of her class didn’t seem to mesh so well and the class seemed to be very stop/starty in my opinion. Hopefully it gets better the more classes I attend :)
As it was, the hour long session was enough to make me sweat and slightly sore, but damn it, I know I’m going to feel pretty good once I’ve got a few more of these classes tucked under my belt. And now that I’ve seen the level of difficulty of the routine, getting Chantelle to join me for a couple of stretches ought to be a cinch!
Which reminds me. I also need to invest in more stretchy pants.
It kind of hurts when your jogging shorts cuts into your balls mid stretch…