Pain, loneliness, stillness, learning

[flexagon]

I've finally learned exactly what motion MOST affects my injured hamstring fibers, which had been hard to isolate. So now when I'm bored in a meeting I cross my right ankle over my left, and I pull my right foot backward and up, hard, for 10 slow isometric pulses. The first set of every day hurts like fire. Hopefully it's breaking up the connections between healing muscle fibers that aren't going in the right direction... this kind of thing is what I like to visualize. Work it, stretch it, foam roller & lacrosse ball it, ultrasound it every night. Surely this can't hold out against 4-6 weeks of TLC.

I need it to get better, because the most recent thing my coach says is holding back my press is... my pike. ARGH, I used to have a good pike, and I took it for granted and lost it while I was obsessing about my pancake. Thinking about that kind of took my usual joy in touching my chest to the ground, this morning, and turned it to dust... alas. And I added some pike stretching. Honest to dog, any one attribute or strength is easy enough to develop, but trying to have the eighteen you need for a press handstand ALL AT THE SAME TIME is a bitch.

Scooper and the Ant are both gone for two and a half weeks while they're off getting certified as acroyoga teachers. Ugh. It's been over a week already and I want them back. That's why it's extra good that I managed to schedule two sessions working with Rocky in the meantime... and I'm pouring energy into solo skills and into basing. (I'm kind of dying to tell the boys that I based standing foot-to-hand on Weds and managed to do a lay-down, taking it to low foot-to-hand. That's a move they struggle with.) I can make killer progress with Rocky, but it only helps a little bit. I still miss them.

In better news, my static handstand holds have improved a lot in just the last two weeks. My coach pointed out that I was fighting way too hard for my adjustments and bouncing myself out of the balance when I was already in the right place... and that was just the observation I needed. I worked on calming down and being still, and trusting it (what is "it"? there's no base to trust. trust the ground? trust physics?) and WHAM my hold times basically doubled. When I find the right place, my handstands now feel a lot more the way crow pose does. This is not to say I can kick or jump to the right place with any regularity. But something's changed when I am there where it's about precision now, and less effortful. One day maybe I'll feel what nevers used to say about falling down mostly happening when she lost focus, and not because of fatigue. But for now I still tend to lose it when I lose proprioception and something drifts.

Comments

[flexagon]

I'm not 100% sure either. Maybe, if I'm being honest, the time when I lose the feeling of where my hips are is exactly when I stop focusing on it. But it's hard to tell. Certainly at times I've been thinking hard about a certain body part and still failing to feel where it is.

On a mild tangent, last night was discouraging. I held a handstand for about 20s in front of the teacher and he was like "Hmm, stable. But S-shaped." This teacher is so good at drilling technique things, but he's so low-key that I never walk out of his class feeling like I have the slightest bit of promise. ARGH. As a handbalancing teacher, do you get enthusiastic when your students do things right?

[nevers.livejournal.com]

hmm... i never know where my hips are (except maybe in one-arms). they are just wherever i put them. what i have to focus on is where within my palms my bodyweight is centered.

that does sound discouraging! who is this teacher? i think if anything i err toward telling people they're doing something better when i can only just barely sort of imagine a tiny improvement. of course i get excited for more visible successes!

[flexagon]

Do your hips stay where you put them?? If so, you're a lucky duck. Mine like to drift slowly, imperceptibly backwards when I'm not constantly telling them to stay still, until my butt falls back and pulls me into an arch and a pike and then everything sucks.

This post isn't locked, but what the hell, the teacher is Marlon Archer. I've got to add that he's super nice, just very low-key. I don't think he ever says anything negative or overtly discouraging, and he does say "good" when I do a drill right. Maybe it's just that he responds more to a handstand's relation to the Platonic ideal of a handstand, and less to how the student is doing with relation to themselves a month ago or five minutes ago, so improvement on its own isn't necessarily exciting or to be rewarded. I'm not sure.

I'm TOTALLY benefitting from his drills, and from getting input from two very different teachers right now (I still see my usual coach for hs twice a week). As long as I always go out for a burger and a drink right after his class, I think it's a net win. :-)

[nevers.livejournal.com]

i think they stay where i put them! except not in one-arms.

lauren described the class he taught here as a sub and it sounded excellent especially in terms of technique. i bet you are benefitting! and burger + drink... definitely net win.

[nevers.livejournal.com]

p.s. if you drift toward an arched back and piked hips (yes?) that sounds like it's because in your hs you are constantly fighting to keep your shoulders open. it sounds like it's the result of shoulders closing rather than hips drifting of their own accord. does that seem true? which is not to say that focusing on your hips won't acheive the same result and focusing on your shoulder angle, but it might be worth experimenting.

[flexagon]

yes... absolutely I drift toward piked hips and an arched back, and it means shoulders are closing. thanks for calling out that the hip motion could be an effect of my shoulders creeping closed, rather than the root cause of the motion. Ideally I could hold them both fixed in my mind, but in reality some one thing is always the primary focus; I'll experiment with each focus and see what results in a longer hold. I know that my coach often says "that's your butt falling over" so I do think it's sometimes the hips going first, but probably not every time.