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I did the P90X Yoga X workout a little bit differently the second time through and I was glad that I did.

July 14, 2007

Day 11: Yoga X

When I did Yoga X last week, I attempted, more or less, all the moves and did my best to keep up with Tony & Co., even when I knew I was doing them improperly. I decided to do it a little differently this week.

Since I had the experience of trying everything last week, I decided to go a little more slowly this week and spend more time watching the video.

One of my problems with yoga, although I do have some experience with it, is that I am not so accustomed to it that it seems to come naturally. I have done thousands of push-ups in my 27 years (although not many in the last 9) and I can hit the deck and pump them out with perfect form until I get tired. This is not the case with yoga. However, this is certainly not due purely to my lack of experience.

I’d have to say that yoga is inherently more complex than strength training. Form is of supreme importance in both, to be sure… as is breath. However, it strikes me that, with strength training, once you have the form down, you, more or less, have it down. When you want to make it more difficult you add more weight. But with yoga, when you have it down, in addition to holding poses for longer and stretching farther, you add more complexity.

It is telling that the Hindu tradition dictates that one should learn yoga only under the direction of an instructor. Now, there are many reasons for this, many of which don’t apply to the way yoga tends to be done in the U.S., and I’ll write about these more in the future, but I find it noteworthy that my high school football coach (who was also my middle school baseball coach) never told me, “Only do bicep curls under the direction of an instructor.” Rather, when I first approached him about lifting weights, he wanted me to go out and buy some free weights for myself and get to work pumping iron.

Anyway, I did spend less time doing the yoga and more time watching Tony & Co. today. Anytime I was not sure exactly where my feet were supposed to be, how flat my back was supposed to be, the position of my arms, etc., I stopped and checked out the video. I even stopped entirely for about 15 minutes in the middle when the moves get especially difficult and just watched. I learned a lot, and think I’ll do much better next week.

Once again, even though I spent less time in a state of discomfort this time than last time, I cried during the ohms at the end of the routine. Once again, I was physically and emotionally exhausted. Once again, I have been emotional all day, alternating between feelings of anger and sadness for the most part. However, as I wrote last week, this is to be expected… and won’t last forever as long as I keep doing Yoga X.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 25th, 2007 at 6:58 pm and is filed under Exercise, P90X, Ripped. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.