Category: stretch

##[19] y weekly yoga=harder than diet, jogging, codingDrill..

Posted on by tiger40490

k_Promethean_struggle  k_soul_search

My yoga, diet daily battle, coding drill .. all feel like Promethean struggles. But Why was yoga so utterly hopeless compared to the others?

— key reason — (misperception) whatever my effort, I remain clearly way below average among the “peers” though in reality those “peers” are mostly women and yoga instructors

— key reason — yoga is too hard to hold and require too much willpower. Jogging and coding drill are better. The yoga poses I pick are way too painful. I can barely hold for 5 seconds but I force myself to hold many times longer. I set an unrealistic target and set myself up for failure

I now decide to use easy, sustainable stretches. As I told Rahul, I used to feel they are too easy to be effective, but Jess Lin pointed out my mis-assumption.

— reason (?) — i don’t see any progress. This is actually a common “phenomenon” in diet, coding drill, jogging etc. Somehow I used this argument for decades to dismiss the idea of daily stretch.

yoga4life: regular practice #Jess.Lin

Posted on by tiger40490

at twice a week, the total hours would be 3 to 5 /wk, based on my Bayonne experience. This is much more than the hours I can allocate to all other workouts combined. Therefore, the tcost is unsustainable.

Reality is, yoga isn’t life-saving like kidney dialysis that must be performed weekly. Most guys are unable to do 3 sessions/week and therefore 3 sessions/week is unrealistic for most people, just like 5 workouts/week.

The sustainable tcost has to be based on self-practice.

The challenge is mostly in the mind. I was able to climb at least one flight of stairs every day when living in Blk 177 or #1173.

Daily practice is not easy at all. Let’s be realistic. Key is frequency. Aim at “regular” exercise. Okay to be vague.

jolt: I’m able to hold lotus position for 15min every trip on MRT.

— frq and duration ..
Goal 5: try to stretch for 5 min on the body part you last used. Aim for 1-2 such stretches a week.
Goal 3: One realYoga instructor suggested “Daily practice with easy yin-yoga pose but hold it for up to 2 min.” I can do some easy stretch (like lotus) for 30 sec every day.
Goal 2: If you can’t then I would say aim for 2 minutes twice a week for 2 months.
Goal 1: If you can’t then I would say aim for 1 minute a week. I think it would be (significantly) better than nothing. It’s better than most guys, as I told the PlatinumYoga salesman.

Longer sessions? not practical due to my current mental block. Short sessions have the “anywhere” advantage

— modest vs tough poses
Negative xp: In Macq corridor, I focused on only the hard poses and gave up within weeks. Now I want to use modest ones.

The realYoga instructor said “easy stretches”.

Jess Lin said even the easy poses can be helpful. From a physiological point of view, she might be right. Am no expert.

Jess said many easy poses can become challenging when you focus on your form. Downward dog is good case in point. Correct downward dog (AA) is as hard as pigeon (BB), but I can easily ease into AA , from an incorrect form. The incorrect form still helps and is easy to accept. With BB, I just feel lousy. It’s crucial to recognize that

  • some poses are way too hard even in an incorrect form. Even 10% of that pose would be too hard for me
  • Therefore, those poses create self-hate and are counter-productive, so I had better avoid them.
  • However, they still pop up either in class or from memory. They are hardball (even the Tallboys). Since I don’t have the helmet I need to play dodgeball, deflect, or strengthen my mental toughness.

I would use mostly modest poses, and try hard ones only when in the mood.

When you stop breathing (perhaps in the tough zone), your focus is off and you are no longer doing yoga.

— Q: how many poses?
Pick from a modest pool of 20 poses. There are hundreds of poses but I can ignore them for my life and still have a rewarding yoga habit.

— self^group practice
For lifelong practice, foundation has to be self practice. I don’t want to rely solely on the fancy facilities.. unsustainable.

Classes can get me into the tougher zone and longer session. Classes can also reboot a declining routine.

yoga: i tend to compare with ..

Posted on by tiger40490

Instead of compare-out with ordinary people, I tend to compare-up with long-time practitioners. Note most long-time practitioners are pretty good at yoga as most people won’t engage in something long term if they remain below average.. I’m a REAL hero because I am a long-time practitioner even though I’m not good at it.

  1. Most of the experienced practitioners are women. I end up treating them as my … peers but they are much stronger than me in flexibility.
    • Most are weaker than me in diet, BMI, shape, strength, endurance
  2. for guys, I mostly look at yoga instructors.
  3. for the regular guys, I mostly look at the poses they are good at and basically ignore the many more poses that I’m good at.

— turning point — BGC
At BGC yoga class with about 20 women + couple of guys, I was no longer the weakest student, with the poorest form.
Note The poses were regular poses, including my weaknesses. None of the class is easy.

I think I was visibly weak only at real-yoga

In hindsight, viewed together with the VirginActive yoga instructor conversation (JessLin), this experience might be a turning point and game changer for me.

A turning point in my mentality and perception.

yoga^coding-drill derailer=peer comparison

Posted on by tiger40490

k_soul_search

In yoga and coding drill, the underlying derailer is peer comparison.

— With yoga, I felt doomed that whatever effort I put in, I would still be too weak too “short”, too sub-standard compared to “their” standard.

— With coding drill on leetcode, I felt the leetcoders are too fast too strong too far ahead of me.

— (my teenage experience) I was a top math student in Beijing, but when I attended a math Olympiad training, I hit “engine loss of power”. I think the topic on that day was some number theory. A few students seem to know the tricks just like the tricks in leetcode.

I didn’t know the tricks, so as Shanyou put it, there’s no way you can compete. You just look retarded even if you are actually stronger.

—-

Result: engine loss of power. Catastrophic failure.

## give yourself enough time: yoga++

Posted on by tiger40490

As Martin Thompson put it, time is the most important factor in performance tuning. Some /endeavors/ need time. Like a plant, they can’t be rushed. I have a tendency to rush on several endeavors:

  1. give yourself time to experience yoga — Find (or design) your own practice. Could be totally different from other people’s practice.
  2. give yourself time to understand your own kids — Tough, long process. Non-trivial.
  3. give yourself time to learn cooking — calorie restriction, starch reduction, more vegie .. Find your own way.
  4. Give yourself time to understand the quant and machine-learning space — find your position and attitude

[19] Am I improving ] yoga@@ Jess.Lin chat

Posted on by tiger40490

Update: https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-exercises/definitive-guide-to-yoga#-measuring-success

—-

After talking to Jess Lin of VirginActive, I concluded that … compared to pre-RealYoga, I’m improving though I don’t see it. I gestured to Jess that the improvement is mostly up here, pointing my index finger at my head. It is in perception (of the value of flexibility), attitude, daily routine achieved. “Mind-over-body”. The body improvement will follow in due course. The physical improvement will happen automatically over years and can be unnoticeable. The real control factor is my own perception.

  • When I engage in weekly practices, I am improving.
    • Weekly is the minimum consistency to start the ball rolling. That’s all in the mind. On the body level, perhaps daily frequency is the minimum, but the real battle and real progress is in the mind.
    • Jess said even 1 minute a day of consistent practice is not easy.
  • When I believe Jess that compared to others, I’m not that bad even in my Y-junction, I am improving.
  • When I stop asking disparaging questions “You mean I’m better than guys only, not women, right?“, I’m improving.
  • When I stop feeling hopeless about my flexibility. I am improving. Hope is priceless. Confidence is precious.
  • When I stop feeling yoga is a useless waste of time as I used to say, I’m improving.
  • When I compare jogging with yoga and see my double-standard, I’m improving.
  • When I finally see a glimmer of hope that I could possibly find a way to practice yoga consistently_for_life, I’m improving.
  • When, on my flights, I started sitting for hours with knees under armrest, I was improving, both physically and mentally.
  • When I realize the Grade-A flexible women are not stronger than me and I’m not hopeless at yoga, I am improving.

Q: why so many beginners try yoga and give up?
A: many of my mental blocks are blocking them too. In fact, many of them can improve physically and mentally, over years, but they can’t see beyond a few months. What they see is what I saw — that their body would loosen a bit then relapse.

Jolt: Relapse is the reality. Relapse happens in jogging, strength training, swimming, jump-rope, walking. Somehow, I fear relapse only in yoga and I don’t even notice relapse elsewhere? I think the real difference might be my subconscious peer comparison —

  • Somehow I see the grade-A women as “peers”
  • Somehow I see the leetcoders as peers.

Yoga feels like a whip and a no-win endeavor. Whenever my weekly yoga was suspended, I always beat myself up. Whenever I resume yoga, I still feel too easy and wasting time (and at the same time) too tough, unsustainable, and insufficient effort i.e. lazy self.

All the discoveries and improvements are mental (with a physical element). Real battlefield is in the head. Rationality is winning. Yoga is winning.

yoga = different from stretch` #goal

Posted on by tiger40490

I have a American book on everyday stretches in the office..

  • diff: availability of teachers and classes
  • Diff: breathing is central to many if not all yoga practices
  • Diff: In terms of goal, yoga is NOT so focused on reaching a particular range of motion. For me, I don’t aim at that at all, though I may achieve that as a by-product.
  • Diff: hard stretch for athletes and dancers often feel like painful tortures. I now believe yoga should NEVER feel torturous. You need effort, not brute force willpower.

mild scoliosis

Posted on by tiger40490

x-ray shows a very mild scoliosis, not reportable. “reduced lumbar lordosis” is the note by the expert at Raffles Medical.

Master Saumik said twist and backbend would help straighten the spine. I believe him. Doctor said sitting posture and yoga would help.

Without a conscious effort, aging could worsen it? Doctor said should not.

Taking the x-ray turns out to be a worthwhile experience. A yoga master’s comment can be less reliable than I believed. This experience /calibrates/ my own “system” as to the level of confidence and credibility to be assigned to each expert.

In 5 years I may appreciate the heads-up by Saumik.