Hot Yoga is Hard, Part II (And... Why I Need To Workout More)

Yes... it's been a while since I posted.  Let me just tell you - I have been crazy busy on top of being sick and exhausted for the past few weeks.  I feel like since I came back from Dallas - it has just been go, go, go - and I'm beat.  There have been quite a few things going on - so let me just try to quickly summarize:

1. I have spent more hours at the gym lately than hours I've been home and awake (sleeping hours don't count). The awesome news is... I start coaching on my own on Tuesday!!!  YEAH!  I'll be coaching the 6:30/7:30pm classes on Tuesday for the month of June as well as some other classes thrown in when we need someone to fill in.  I'm psyched about it.  So... if you want to witness my glorious debut in person - 6:30pm on Tuesday.  Can't wait. 
2. I have been sicker than I'm willing to admit (direct quote from Dr. Tara).  I have been exhausted and just run down and went to the doctor a few weeks back to find out what was wrong.  She tested me for everything under the sun - Vit D deficiency, anemia, epstein barr, a whole bunch of other stuff I didn't understand - AND... turns out I have mono.  MONO!?!  Who gets that who isn't in college or high school? Well... me apparently.  Before the kissing jokes start - I wish I got it that way.  No sir - I am not that lucky.  I simply got it from having a cold, getting run down and having it turn into something ugly.  Awesome.  And I've had it before in college... but then, (Mom/Dad - skip this part!) I definitely got it from too much drunken boy kissing. Whoops.  So... for those of you who say you can't have mono twice - you're wrong.  And no... I probably haven't been taking care of myself like I should be.  I'm still working out - I'm still going to work - I'm still having to act like a normal adult.  I'm just napping a lot.  Sometimes on the floor of my office. 
3. I'm house hunting.  Which is so stressful.  I hate it.  Trying to find a place I want to live for the unforeseeable future makes me all cringy.  It should be exciting - but I find it overwhelming and nerve wracking. 
4. I've just in general been an emotional wreck.  Being tired all of the time will do that to you.  I've found myself wanting to retreat into my house and hide from the world - but I'm too busy to do that (which is probably a good thing).  I'm trying really hard to keep it together all of the time and am so grateful that I have some of the most stellar friends who know exactly what to say when I'm feeling all blah-ish. 
5. The end result of items 1-4?  No time to blog.  Or cook.  Or date.  Or do anything besides sleep, work, or do CrossFit-ty things.  BUT... it's June now.  So I'm making time.  Starting now.  

 Moving on...

Today, I went to hot yoga.  I bought a Groupon a while back for Urban Yoga Spa - it's conveniently located a block from my office so I figured I could go one day a week after work to their 4pm class.  Well... turns out this hot yoga is significantly hotter than the other yoga place I went to back in April.  I spent at least 45 minutes of the 75 minute class laying on my back on the mat trying to figure out how I was going to get to the end of class without dying, or at the very least, passing out.  So hot.  So uncomfortable.  This place uses infrared heat - which should have been a sign that I was going to be massively unhappy about 5 minutes in.  I felt like I was in a slow roaster.  It was awful.  I did approximately 12% of the moves.  Holding a plank in 110 degrees? No thank you.  It's questionable on whether I will be going back to take advantage of the remainder of my pre-paid visits.  Ugh.  

On the positive side - I'm hoping that all the sweat helped release some of the icky sick toxins floating around my body.  So... hot yoga was either a really good idea... or a really bad idea.  Stay tuned.

On another CrossFit-ty note...

This weekend, the coaches at SCF went to watch the NorthWest Regionals and holy god, those athletes are INCREDIBLE.   It was definitely eye opening for me and made me want to go to the gym immediately and start doing more athletic things.  (The irony is that I haven't actually gone to the gym since... but I'm going tonight... I swear.)  Workout #4 for the men/women was 100 wall balls, 100 pull ups, 100 pistols, 100 one-armed DB snatches.  Yowza.  We watched at least 10 heats - so you can do the math on how many that is.  A lot.  Not going to lie... I was ready to see a different movement by the men's second heat.  (Bonus fact for the day: most of the men's heats did it shirtless.  Hello!)

It seriously makes me want to get into the gym more to work on skills - need to figure out when exactly I can squeeze in extra hours of gym time on top of my already packed schedule.  

I am also thrilled with the results of regionals - Rory Zambard was one of my Level 1 Cert trainers and she kicked ass at regionals and is moving on to the Games.  So excited to watch her on TV (and you had better believe there will be some sort of CrossFit Games viewing party somewhere...).  She was the instructor who worked with me on squats - my quads hated her - but my squats have improved a million times over since that course.  Yay!!! Go Rory!

This isn't actually relevant.  I just love the fact that she's carrying him like it's no big thing.  (And also the fact that he looks slightly panicked.)  Partner carries anyone??? 

Hot Yoga is Hard

I did my first hot yoga class yesterday and... wow... hot yoga is HARD.  And this wasn't even true hot yoga - this room was only 95 degrees.  Apparently true hot yoga is like 105.  I can't even imagine.  I was a sweat monster.  Like totally disgusting sweaty beast.  And I smelled.  Sexy?  Not so much. 

Why am I doing yoga, you ask?  Aren't I a CrossFitter?  Totally.  I am TOTALLY a CrossFitter (is CrossFitter actually a word?  It should be.).  But last week - a couple of the coaches were talking about using hot yoga to increase flexibility (turns out I'm not the only one with inflexibility issues) and it piqued my interest.  So, I thought I'd give it a try.  And I have never sweated so much in my entire life.  Maybe not even if you took all my CrossFit workouts and combined the sweat into one.  And I wasn't as bad as the guy in front of me - he was doing yoga in a puddle of his own sweat.  You go sweaty yoga guy - you kicked my ass in every single pose. 

Turns out - I'm terrible at yoga.  I had this fantasy that because I've gotten in better shape that I'd be better at it than the last time I tried.  False.  I was maybe worse. Could be because we did vinyasa yoga (Side note: There are so many kinds of yoga.  SO MANY KINDS.  Bikram.  Flow.  Vinyasa.  Power vinyasa.  Power flow vinyasa.   Gentle.  Aggressive.  Beat yoga.  Yoga for pregnant people.  Yoga for old people. Plain yoga.  Are you confused yet?  I am. SO very confused.).  I'm going to go ahead and blame it on the burpees and deadlifts I did yesterday morning - but my arms were shaking by the time we'd gotten through our second round of chataranga (which I guarantee is spelled wrong - but if you've done vinyasa yoga - you know exactly what I mean).  

I am uncoordinated and not the least bit graceful and I kept looking at the folks around me who were holding poses like it wasn't even remotely difficult while it took every ounce of my energy just to hold downward dog and not fall over.  Grandma on the yoga mat next to me was killing it while I couldn't figure out which hand to put where (cue Jess with the *cough* switch arms *cough*).  Turns out following directions AND knowing right from left are also not exactly my forte.    

By the end of the 90 minutes session, I was a messy puddle of sweat with shaky arms and legs and had missed half of the poses - but I finished it. And it felt damn good.  Being in the warm room, smelling the odor of 25 sweaty people while failing epicly at flexibility and coordination was surprisingly awesome.  Do I want to trade in my CrossFit shoes for a yoga mat and towel?  No way.  I love the energy that goes into CrossFit - and something about throwing weights around while swearing and listening to loud music makes me happy. But it was great to experience something new and to use my muscles in a different way than usual.  I'm definitely going to add some hot yoga into my workout routines... at least for the next 30 days as the girl at the counter definitely convinced me into the 30 day trial. Yoga girl upsell = 1, AmEx Card = 0

Namaste y'all. 

This seems peaceful.  What I did?  Not so peaceful.