I Did More Yoga, As I Said I Would

January 17, 2014

In my “year of responsibility” post, I mentioned that I wanted to do more yoga.

And I did! Yay!

There was a gym down the street from the place where I worked starting in October. They had yoga 4 nights a week at 9pm, which was perfect for me because everyone else had already left by then and I could go take a long dinner break if I wanted.

Of course, there were some nights where we were slammed and it wasn’t possible – not that I’d ever go to yoga 4 times a week anyway!

My general goal was to go twice a week and basically just pick the days that were possible. I always shot for starting it off on Monday since I never knew what the week ahead held.

I will say that doing yoga helped me to improve in my running, and stay strong and injury free. However, I’ll also say – yoga is miserable!

I think I’ve said that before. But I always follow it up with, “However, I know it’s good for me. I want to be strong and flexible. Blah Blah Blah.”

I do want to be strong and flexible. And I do want to be as awesome as this random woman I found on instagram. But I do NOT want to spend hours of my life focusing and breathing and uuuuugggghhhhh…

Yoga is not for me. Not every exercise is for everybody. And that one is not for me. I am a more intense type person. I don’t like just focusing on breathing. To me, that’s so boring, and frustrating, and I can’t stand it anymore.

If yoga were the same poses, holding them for the same amount of time, but we had ’90s pop music in the background and a drill sergeant yelling at us… maybe.

We actually did have an intense instructor who’d yell things like, “Do any of you even know how to use your bodies?!” I think that’s why I lasted so many weeks, ’cause he was interesting…

But I’m done! I’ve learned enough so that I think I can stretch myself out pretty well. And I’m happy to do that while watching a game show or doing anything at all other than listening to silence or ohms or whatever.

I still think flexibility and strength are wildly important components of running. I will work to keep them involved in my workouts in one way or another so I can continue to grow as a runner. I’m happy I gave yoga such a chance. But I’m over it! So long, yoga. It’s been real.

I'd love to hear from you! So whaddya say?