Category: Exercise

If you’ve been keeping up with my goings-on, you know I’ve been in a yoga zone for the past 3 or 4 months. That means I’ve been doing yoga almost exclusively. I fell into the yoga zone because of a back injury, but I stayed there because I enjoyed it so much.

A couple weeks ago I decided enough was enough — I need some cardio — so I added some Insanity workouts back into the mix.

Today, craving some more challenging resistance training, I decided to try Steve’s Chest & Back. I could feel that my chest and back were not what they used to be, so I wanted to test them out.

Wow.

Since the last time I did Steve’s Chest & Back, which was exactly 6 months ago, my pushups and pullups are down almost 50%. That means I can only do half as many now as before!

I knew I’d lost something, but I never figured it was that much.

To clarify, I am not trying to look like a puffed up gym rat. But it’s kinda like, “Hey, I used to be able to do 210 pushups interwoven with 75 pullups, both of varying types, in about 50 minutes. Now I can only do about half that.” I want to be able to do that again! (And, to be sure, even more pullups, which, as you can see by the numbers, I struggle with….)

This post is not meant to knock yoga, and I still love it and will use it as my primary workout. However, I could tell from the fit of my t-shirts that I was losing mass — and I didn’t have a lot of mass to start with, so I’d like to keep all I can get.

You know what that means, right? Right. Steve’s Chest & Back is back into the rotation. Wednesdays. Rotating that out with Tony Horton’s One on One 30/15 routine every 4 weeks (after a week of rest).

So, as it looks right now, here is my current weekly schedule:

• Monday: Insanity Max Cardio
• Tuesday: Brian Kest Power Yoga #1 or #2
• Wednesday: Steve’s Chest & Back
• Thursday: Rodney Yee Energy Balance Yoga
• Friday: Insanity Max Interval Cardio Circuit
• Saturday or Sunday: David Swenson Yoga Short Forms :45

It will be interesting to see how quickly I get back up to speed on my pushups and pullups, don’t you think? Well, I do.

Suddenly I could not touch my toes.

It’s not like I’m the most flexible guy in the world. Possibly I’m more flexible than most my age, but I think much of that perceived flexibility comes from the fact that my belly is flatter than most old guys, so I don’t have as much fat in my way when I bend over.

No matter.

I went to bed one day last week with some discomfort in my glutes. (That would be my ass, for those of you unfamiliar with the body’s major muscle groups.) It was just discomfort, nothing to think about.

When I woke up the next day, the discomfort had progressed to what I will call “tightness”, which is just discomfort times two. The only time I really felt it was when I tried to bend over, so I thought I’d test it out, and, sure enough, I could barely get my hands to my knees before my body told me to stop.

What the hell?!?!?!? Have I finally really done myself in? With yoga?

Yeah, yoga. I’ve pretty much been doing yoga exclusively for the past few months, and, while I have injured myself in the past with yoga, I’d experienced no trauma that I’d felt during the previous day’s workout, which was Rodney Yee: Yoga for Athletes.

Yet here I was with a problem.

I consulted my fitness expert friend Donna, and she mentioned piriformis syndrome, which is a compressed nerve thing, and that sounded pretty logical to me, because this pain didn’t seem muscular. It was too evenly distributed throughout my glutes, reaching down into the hamstrings.

She recommended some stretching, so I did that, then tried Rodney Yee: Flexibility, which is my go-to yoga routine when I don’t feel like doing anything. I got through it, but with not near the range of motion I usually have for forward bends. Everything else was fine.

The next day, I felt a bit better, but I thought it was time to kick it up a notch and break out the Max Cardio routine from Shaun T’s Insanity. (I really only meant to do the Pure Cardio routine, which is 10 minutes shorter, but I accidentally put Max Cardio in my pre-workout Facebook status update, so I held myself to it.)

During the workout, I noticed that I could only really feel the pain during high knees and jumping jacks, both of which jar the glutes. Outside that, no big deal.

The next day called for rest, then yoga, another Insanity workout, yoga again. Here we are at today, and I feel totally healed.

So, let’s see, what have I learned from this situation?

First, the body is a strange thing. I don’t know what caused the pain, and I may never know. What I did know, though, at the time, was that the injury was not muscular — I could feel that was true — so I felt I could push through it. I am not sure if my aggressive treatment with Insanity sped up recovery, but it sure didn’t hurt.

Second, there’s always a good reason not to do something, but some things are worth doing anyway. This applies to everything in life. You can always find a perfectly valid reason — not something weak enough to be called an “excuse”, but a sound rationalization — for not performing, not working out. The key to fitness success is pushing through and getting it done.

Third, and last, WTF? Maybe this has happened to you, too. But, seriously, what the hell is going on in my body to have that kind of pain just crop up and totally cramp my style? Maybe my body was telling me that yoga is fine, but I need to do a little more punishing work with Shaun T at least a couple times a week. Noted and workout schedule has been adapted!

By the way, I am very happy to report that even though I’ve been doing yoga almost exclusively for the past 3 months, I felt very little soreness after Max Cardio, and, while I don’t have a good way to gauge it except for the way I feel during the workout, my cardio fitness seemed fine, too.

All hail the power of yoga. I’ll need to go through that last pre-pain-in-the-ass Rodney Yee workout, though, and see what might have broken me. Then I’ll own it.