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2 minutes of jumping jacks = my calves are going to be nonfunctional tomorrow.

10 pushups, then 10 seconds in down dog, then 9 pushups, then 10 seconds in down dog, then 8 pushups... = OH MY GOD. I was still going, very slowly and on my knees, when they told everyone to stop, but my pecs may be nonfunctional tomorrow too.

Back handspring drills on the trampoline track just made me pissy. I wasn't ready for them, and anyway, I don't care about back handsprings. Why they're trying to teach them to me is a mystery... certainly not based on my saying I wanted to learn the stupid things. Also, I react badly to being told to hit the mat harder ("Harder! Harder!"). Ugh, shades of tae kwon do. I was beginning to think things like waste of a nice Monday night and maybe I'll just stop wasting my time here.

So, I wandered away to where the other teacher was working with our token dorky 13-year-old on handstands. There, where I could fall onto an air mattress if I went over, I worked on straddle-ups to handstand and... they clicked. It was not very dramatic. I did one and then another and then, was that five in a row? six? what's happening!? seven! I got too into counting and messed up the eighth. The other teacher (who is very tall, black and chill) noticed me after a while and we talked about them a bit. Also about tuck-ups (I did one) and pike-ups, and a drill involving alternating straddle-ups and forward rolls. Now that they have clicked, assuming the click sticks, I can work on that next time. :)

When they work, they feel more like "rock and press" than they do like jumping much.

Date: 2006-10-31 03:10 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nevers.livejournal.com
see, pushups are a totally adequate form of pec work!

back handsprings are easier to learn than roundoffs because they're much simpler (no twisting), which is probably why they're starting you on them. i'm surprised you don't think they seem like fun. i think being about to do a standing back handspring would be ace.

yay straddle-up click!!

are you still not comfortable cartwheeling/twisting out of an overbalanced hs? if not it would be good to get someone to work with you on them there.

i found out i can do kicking headstand-to-handstand pushups from my head on a mid-level yoga block (on its long, narrow side) but not from my head on a low-level yoga block (on its long, wide side). also, failed attempts when my head lands back on the yoga block? not so comfy.

Date: 2006-10-31 02:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nevers.livejournal.com
hmm, i don't know, twisting out doesn't bother my wrists at all. what part of it do you think is problematic?

there are some pretty advanced people who still prefer rolling out (so i hear from the internet... everybody i work with twists out and i can't imagine prefering to roll rather than to twist on a hard surface) so i guess you're ok.

before i started i thought i would just come down on my feet if i didn't make it all the way up into a hs... but it didn't work that way. i think my descent was too fast to bail out on. but i'm excited by this new route to working hspu muscles!

Date: 2006-11-01 02:01 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nevers.livejournal.com
taking a step forward with one hand to reposition it is definitely an option. i'm pretty sure that's how i started to do these. i can try to take a video of that method today.

but i think either way, the majority of your weight is in the hand you are using as a fulcrum for the twist. as the weight comes off the other hand, you can lift the heel of your hand off the floor, so that hand can move with your body rather than getting tweaked.

Image

and source video:
http://somethingsbegun.com/overbalance1.avi (sorry, 14.1 mg! i didn't want to compress it too much so you can see my hands). maybe watching the overbalance at the end in slow-mo will help you make sense of it? or maybe not.

Date: 2006-11-01 02:09 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nevers.livejournal.com
it doesn't show there but sometimes i just come up onto my fingertips of the left hand (like when you put your fingertips on the floor in a lunge in yoga) so that all five fingers are bearing weight but my wrist is almost straight. i don't have a lot of strenth in that hand/wrist position, but i also don't have a lot of weight on that hand -- i use it mostly for control. for a while, i thought that twisting action was tweaking my left shoulder (i later decided it wasn't) and lifted my left hand altogether as i began to fall. which goes to show that you don't even need it.

Date: 2006-11-06 12:33 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nevers.livejournal.com
yay, i'm so glad it helped! i think if you are sideways cartwheeling you're on the right track. heather, who refuses to be hand-spotted in hss so misses out on that aspect of instruction, used to just sidecartwheel, and on her own got the hang of twisting to continue the motion backward, so i bet you will too.

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