Work, fitness, flying across the country on Earth Day

[flexagon]

Ugggggggh. All I did this week until today is work. Missing three workouts in a row work, almost until midnight every night work. Work, work, it's really getting a little old. Yesterday I met with my team to set them up with stuff to do while I'm gone, which included "oh look, we have this new crisis that must be fixed by May 1. I don't know quite how to fix it, but I'll be gone until then, so it's your top priority... kthxbai!"

Going to ashtanga after that all that felt like 90 minutes of religion, or like someone was running a few passes of a sorting algorithm across the scattered bits of my being. I wasn't at my most flexible, but I was strong. I did more jump-throughs (from down dog through my hands to seated) than I maybe ever have before in one class.
Do you guys have sudden step-functions in your fitness or physical skill learning, where something that felt very hard suddenly "clicks" and  feels a lot less hard? I've had it happen so many times -- most notably with squats, which felt horribly effortful and complex for about sixteen weeks until the day they suddenly fit together like a dance. But that's not the only one: it happened with the breaststroke when I was learning to swim at 13, it happened with pull-ups a few months ago when rifmeister  and I were doing them regularly at work for long enough. Then I missed a month or so of that and pull-ups were hard again... now I'm back into it (we have a group of four, now, that goes down to the exercise room on Tuesdays and Thursdays for pull-ups and upside-down things) , and it happened again, even more so.  Yesterday I went down there, all bottled-up energy, and busted out a set of eight with no warmup. Although I never lost them entirely, it's been a long time since I've been that good at them.

So, now I'm in the airport and I want to spill my guts on several more topics but my flight has started to board. I'm on my way to the five-day acrotastic extravaganza. I hate to leave my family right now when they need me more than usual, but at the same time I think I NEED to be ripped away from work this violently. It's still the top thing on my mind, but, thank goodness, acro is intense enough that in two days it won't be. Friends, California, acrobatics, here I come.

Comments

[nahele-101.livejournal.com]

I've had that breakthrough in numerous areas...
-forward bends with yoga, cupping my heels (I'm a big, strong guy!)
-Flip turns and freestyle swimming just flowing through without effort
-rainbows with breakdancing
-after running about a half mile, my lungs open up and allow full breath in. Before that, it usually feels like a bit of a struggle.

[islenskr.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, that happens all the time to me and it always catches me off guard when it does. The other night at Tango, everything just clicked and suddenly it all worked and I actually enjoyed myself a lot. It happened with skiing this year, too, though I'm still crap at it - suddenly, and it was the last run of the day, I just skied and it was smooth and gorgeous and my balance was pretty much dead on.

Good on the pull ups!! I've done something to my other shoulder (argh!) so it'll be a while before I can train for those again.

Have a great time at acro this week!!

[flexagon]

Yay, it's nice to hear this is common. Some people seem to expect regular progress at things (or expect me to make steady progress at things), and I'm flummoxed because progress is NEVER regular or linear for me. It's always starty-stoppy. Plateau, breakthrough, plateau. It would be good if I could see the breakthroughs coming (handstand breakthrough? soon? please?) but in general I have no warning at all.

[godream.livejournal.com]

Re breakthroughs: yesyesyes. The first time that I got done with my usual (short and not hardcore in the grand scheme but hard for me) running route and thought "you know, I would really like to do that *again*, right now," sticks in my mind in particular.

[flexagon]

Dude, I think any level of regular running is pretty hardcore in the grand scheme of things. I once ran frequently enough for long enough to get through the misery barrier to where it felt okay, but, ugh... that was long ago and I have nowhere NEAR the motivation to break through that again. Running is intense.