Haiku is too easy

[flexagon]

A rather boring cold October day.
I should have worn my jacket. Now I see.
I told the cats don't shed until Friday
But do not think they're listening to me.

At work, I didn't get much done today.
I'm lonely now that all my friends have quit.
A little progress would help to allay
this feeling that I'm sort of faking it.

Then yoga -- by a strange coincidence
we worked on straddle-ups in class. And though
I meant to post of something else for once
I'm working on them still, and now you know.

All day I loved and hated life, in turns.
I want to quiet my brain, but still it churns.

Comments

[nevers.livejournal.com]

so how are your straddle-ups?
i am getting pretty close to a back walkover. i can kick over from a bridge about 1 in 5 or maybe 1 in 3 tries. when i try to connect them though i tend to freak out and bail out, even though it's technically easier to do them connected. it would help if i had a spot to work with me every day.

[flexagon]

errrr... elusive? yeah, that's the word. :)

however, I've got heisenbug spotting me on them every night now and I think that really helps. I can feel that he doesn't have to spot me much. I'm still thinking of the separate pieces of the straddle-up as quite separate things: shift weight, then jump and try hard to push through the calves and roll the lower back and press through the shoulders. it doesn't feel like one integrated motion yet.

a spot on the back walkover helps ENORMOUSLY. all they have to do is push your butt over gently and not let you stop. Can h not spot you?

[nevers.livejournal.com]

hmm... i don't usually have any energy left for acro when i get home in the evenings, and i also don't usually keep our living area clear enough to do a back walkover in it.

equinox doesn't seem to have a member bulletin board for finding an acro partner :(

[flexagon]

oh, should I be working on acro when I'm not dead tired? ;)

sadly, I do in fact work on it after my weight workouts at the gym, and after my regular yoga classes otherwise. this is probably stupid and contributing to my slow progress, but damn it, I hate to drop the weights. hate to drop anything. want to do it all.

[nevers.livejournal.com]

haha. if you can do stuff when you're dead tired, more power to you!! i just feel way too tired to trust myself. also usually by evening my shoulders hurt... and they do not like bridges one bit.

i hear you on not wanting to drop anything.

what kind of weights stuff are you most into? are there specific muscle groups or lifts? just curious since i don't do that stuff at all and don't feel any lack (that is not wholly true but i'll spare you an essay)

[flexagon]

the weight stuff I'm most into is... well, geez, I'm pretty boring when you get down to it. I do almost entirely free weights and/or body weight now, to make sure I use my stabilizer muscles (the only machine I still use is to give me any mechanical advantage is the lat pulldown machine, to warm up for pullups). Dumbbells instead of a bar whenever possible for the same reason. I hit all the major muscle groups. I have upper-body and lower-body days now, but haven't felt the need / found the time to split it up beyond that. Most things I do 3 sets of.

upper body:

lat pulldowns, then actual pullups
military presses
bench presses
bicep curls
side bends with weight in 1 hand (I always laugh when I see people doing it with a dumbell in each hand... don't they realize that defeats the purpose?)
abs, if I think of it... usually leg raises at the dip station, or just holding a low plank for 60 seconds or whatever. I know lots and lots of ab exercises. If at the dip station, try an L-sit.
triceps I used to do dips, but now yoga hits my triceps plenty hard.

lower body:
squats... 5 sets, light, more, more, MORE, light.
hamstring curls
back extensions, aka hungry caterpillars because it looks to me like a caterpillar waving its body around looking for food :)
calf presses
more leg raises at the dip station

then, after either of these I will stretch and do a few handstands.

[nevers.livejournal.com]

very interesting. why bench presses as opposed to pushups? also, do you do bicep curls to help your pullups, or for definition? also curious about the hamstring curls.

the one thing i think would help me with weights is squats. i used to have such powerful legs when i was dancing, and i've lost out that. i am SO RIDICULOUSLY SORE from pushing off for and landing a dozen front handsprings on tuesday. and stronger legs will also help me as a base. but squats, ugh, i just can't get myself to do them.

haha, clearly I could talk about this for a long time

[flexagon]

bench presses: they are heavier/harder than pushups, at least for the pecs. Pushups are good ab work, and obviously a more whole body exercise, but I like the heavy, heavy weights squishing me into the bench. I like knowing my chest is strong.

bicep curls are just for having strong biceps, not for any other cool move -- some of my friends call them beach muscles, but it's funny, they never say that when i'm helping them move boxes in and out of their apartments. :)

hamstring curls... well, I have heard that they're not as useful for other activities as other exercises that use the hamstring to move the hip joint. I like them though. They've made my knees feel more stable in positions where I'm holding a leg out behind me and straight, which used to (and sometimes still do) feel sort of dangerous/wobbly around the knee. If I were strong enough to do glute ham naturals instead, I probably would; but I'm not, and I do back extensions, and yoga, both of which use the hamstring to move the hip.

I highly recommend squats. Warning though: they felt awful to me for four months straight before finally, the seventeenth week, I loved them. So, only if you plan to stick with them. Also, they don't do a damn thing for jumps since they teach you to move fastest in the middle of the movement and slow again at the end.

[nevers.livejournal.com]

see, i can only do about 8 pushups (if i'm doing 3 sets) before my arms and chest get too tired (and it's clearly them, not my abs, that are giving out) so i don't think i need anything harder. when i can do 3x12 i want to elevate my feet, toward the eventual handstand pushup goal.

the glute/ham natural thing looks amazing! i want to start doing ham curls for my heel hang on trapeze
http://impactartists.co.uk/images/Aerialists/ulali2.jpg
i am close to being able to support myself like that but not quite there.

doing curls for knee stability is smart. they are a backup for the acl and that's another reason i should probably do them.

squats don't do ANYTHING for jumps? hmmm. maybe i should just have a front handspring practice. sadly equinox's fitness classrooms both have wood floors (my old gym's was padded) so i don't feel comfortable tumbling there.

[flexagon]

the only way I can do glute/ham naturals at all is to hook my feet under something and then basically just sway forward until I feel I'm about to give out. theoretically I could eventually get all the way down.... hmm, wonder if I could assist this somehow with a cable machine, running the cable over my shoulders from behind me to make my upper body lighter? something to look into.

as for the handstand pushup goal, moving slowly from flat pushup to hs pushup will move the load from mostly-pecs to mostly-delts. this is actually a place where (I imagine) free weights might help a lot. sitting/standing up with weights, you could do the right arm/shoulder motion with weights you can handle, and slowly increase the weights. might make for more direct improvement than training one muscle group then shifting the load to another.

squats could do something for jumps if they're jump squats! to do them, just hold some light dumbbells against your hip creases. squat and jump and squat and jump. i never do these anymore. :)

I never knew my curls were helping back up my acl, just knew my knees started feeling more stable. thank you, that makes more sense now!

[nevers.livejournal.com]

ooh, the cable assist sounds very interesting!

are you saying that moving from flat pushup to hspu would be good because it would slowly shift the load from one muscle group to the other, or that it would be bad because suddenly my delts would have to do most of the work whereas i wasn't working them before?

there's this great list of plyo exercises for power:
http://www.performanceworkouts.com/exercise_guides_power_1.shtml
but i just don't know... i have never seen a "plyo box" at either of the gyms i've tried, and as i've mentioned before, making myself do this stuff is hard because it doesn't feel fun. this is why i need a training partner. but also, neither of the gyms i've tried has had a community bulletin board!

[flexagon]

I was saying it would be bad because you'd be training one group of muscles and then asking a different set of muscles to do the work. Weights seemed like a better approach... but so do the kickups we're working on now. Lower and lower, then kick less and less until it's a press... yeah. :)

Those plyo exercises look kick-ass. I don't see them doing anything with that "plyo box" that you couldn't do with an aerobics step though.