Crow poses, backbends and other stuff!

The latest body balance has been introduced at the gym and I've done it a couple of times now and am enjoying it, a new set of challenges and poses that I have 3 months to learn and get used to.

I always find the first couple of weeks quite hard and then it gets easier as my body adapts to the positions. The balance track is fun and has a real challenge towards the end, which I could do on my right side but not the left (3 months...) I always find the balance track amusing as the trick is to stare at one spot and also to use your stomach muscles, but if the class is quite full and we're all squashed in it can be hard to focus on one fixed spot and not be distracted by the people around you wobbling. If one person topples then a few will follow!

This time we also seem to have an extra balance track where there is just the crow pose

and the firefly pose.

I have never found these poses easy and in fact today I was attempting the firefly and had my hands on the floor and was thinking to myself 'I must have the balance wrong because there is absolutely no way that I can lift my feet off the floor.' Still it was fun watching everyone else try.

We have some killer hip openers that will be good for me and though I only did the 2nd class today, I could feel them stretching more easily than on Monday

At the moment I'm not finding the stomach track difficult despite the fact at one point we have to do a side plank with the top arm and leg raised and then pull them into a stomach crunch, so either it looks hard and isn't or (as of last week's entry) my abs have returned and are starting to earn their money!

The back track ends with a classic back bend and to my pleasant surprise I was able to lift myself into it really easily. Have not done one of those for many years, so well done my body!

Body balance always saves the most difficult pose till the end and I'm sure you'll all have great sympathy for me when I tell you that for the final track I had to hold this pose for a total of 6 mins and 52 seconds....

The Staff 1

Time to introduce to some of the staff at the gym, so here goes.

First up are some of the gym instructors.

They do the weekend shifts on rotation, so today we had Cute Guy. Please feel free to blame one of my friends for the naming of the gym guys. She used to do Ju Jitsu here in Lyon and practically all her conversations would start 'So there was this hot guy at the gym...' We used to have code names for them all, in fact it was quite a surprise to occasionally meet one and find out they had a proper name. So this habit continued when I joined my gym and I was finally able to start conversations with 'So when I saw hot guy at the gym...'

Back to Cute Guy. He really is very sweet, has a lovely personality and you do just want to pick him up and put him in your pocket. He is one of the better instructors and is good at explaining correct movements etc and keeping an eye on everyone in the class. I regularly go to his body balance class on a Monday night. He is also honest if he can't do something (unlike one of the other instructors), for instance some of the advanced moves in body balance are a wee bit challenging and he can't make all of them. He moaned bitterly about the Crow Pose saying that on the training videos all the instructors would just pop up into it and he really couldn't do it. It makes the class slightly refreshing.
Cute Guy has also been known to shake things up a bit, like the other week when he changed the order of the body pump to make it more challenging, but I think I moaned commented about that in a previous post, so won't go about that now.
I think he's been on a Stretch course recently as today he had us doing some strange shoulder and arm stretches that I have never come across before and the other week he had us all lying on the floor with our legs up the walls doing bizarre moves to lengthen our hamstrings and glutes.
He does have a reasonable English accent and doesn't sound too bad when singing along to the lyrics of the songs. He does get the correct lyrics too, which is not always the case. I also like him as he will go and switch the aircon on when necessary and not have a great debate with everyone about it. The French seem to have some mortal fear of the aircon and really don't like having it on, but believe you me, when you have 30 people in a small room, all sweating - you need it!

There is also Petite Girly who was on duty last weekend. I only ever do her classes when she has the weekend shift, so don't really see her that often. She is tiny. I also am not sure if she is boarder line anorexic as she doesn't have an ounce of fat on her. She does have a set of abs to die for. She is very quiet and just comes into the studio, does the class and thats that. No chatting and interacting, just does her stuff. In some ways it can be refreshing, in other ways I don't find it very motivating.
She does have the annoying habit of dictating what weights you should be using in body pump and will, for example, frequently say that the women should use a small and medium weight as a maximum for the triceps, as I'm putting on the large weights on the bar (as encouraged to by the other instructors.)
I do feel a little sorry for her, as she has to do the body pump training but she only takes one class every 4 weeks, so the Sunday Morning Regulars always know the routine better than she does. Last Sunday she gave up the pretense and did one of the older releases and actually it was fun to be having a bit of variety, so I hope she does that again.

That's it for now, I'll introduce some more instructors another time! 

Improved flexibility

So in body balance on Saturday I was in a Hindi squat and then instructed to sit back on the mat behind me, and I have to admit I misjudged this slightly and landed with a bit of a bump. This caused the instructor to add 'délicatement avec grâce et finesse.' and smile at me. Bastard...

I enjoy body balance. In the dark, murky past I used to do Ashtanga yoga and Pilates and used to be very flexible and strong. I used to be a real flexigirl. The Ashtanga was very dynamic and was hard!

At the gym that I used to go to in the UK the guys on the gym floor were very good at telling all the 'muscle men' to do stretching and advising them to go to stretch classes. So every now and then one of them would appear in a yoga class, looking slightly nervous but at the same time confident that they would find a stretch class easy peasy. A few of them made it beyond the sun salutations, some even made the first half hour. I only remember 1 of them sticking with it and returning week after week.

My gym now doesn't do yoga but does body balance (a mix of tai chi, yoga and pilates) and stretch classes - imaginatively titled Le Stretch.

I've been working away at these and have got most of my flexibility back, isn't muscle memory is amazing. I do feel a lot better after each class, it's good to feel all stretched out. The only thing I have trouble with is my hips, I can do forward bends, and my back bends are pretty good, but my hips.... They always have been difficult, I have never been able to a lotus position for example.

The latest couple of releases have had some tough hip openers, and I began to notice a gradual change, which has been good. Then for the last 3 Sundays the instructors have again concentrated on doing hip opening exercises, and boy have my hips been painful. It has payed off and though painful, I can reach deeper into stretches and feel really pleased. Finally the hard work is playing off.

Still can't do the lotus position though....