Ugh, Not Another Utkatasana

I've noticed in both my personal practice and my teaching lately that I have shying away from chair pose (utkatasana).  This is a very common pose and part of the surya B sequence so I encounter it in every class I take and teach.  Utkatasana is sometimes referred to as "victory pose."  Lately, this pose has not been feeling very victorious.

I first noticed my aversion to chair pose this summer.  In my years of practice I had never disliked this pose and I used to teach it frequently.  I create my classes from my practice and I did a lot of cycling this summer. I began to incorporate more front body stretches and a lot of quad openers (which I believe to be lacking in most classes).  Chair pose is a quad strengthener and I began to reduce how often I included it in my classes.

In class a few weeks ago, the instructor had us sit back in chair pose.  A very common instruction, but as I sat there in my chair pose I found myself growing irritated.  She then instructed us to fold forward and the irritation dissipated.  Round 2 of surya B: same problem.  Each time she had us come to chair pose, I found myself coming into it with progressively straighter legs; my level of irritation and the angle between my thighs and calves seemed to be inversely related.  I kept at this experiment for the next week or two, playing with how irritated I was compared to how deep my squat was.  I finally decided that if I didn't want to be irritated I should just avoid the pose (avoiding the problem rather than solving it).  I began only teaching one chair pose in each of my classes and practicing it with such minimal flexion that my legs probably appeared to be fully extended.

I'm not sure why I decided that this pose was going to irritate me and I'm not sure that it matters.  I believe that I need to re-incorporate it into my practice and simply allow these feelings of irritation.  I need to sit with my irritation and acknowledge that some poses just don't feel right sometimes.  What I need to remember is that avoidance is not a good long term coping mechanism.  I have done this with other poses before, most notably pigeon pose.  I hated pigeon and avoided it at all costs.  I still tend to shy away from teaching pigeon but I have come to terms with it and will practice it in class without cursing out my teacher too much.

My practice will always present challenges.  Today my challenges are manifesting themselves in chair pose.  These challenges will not go away, but my ability to handle them is in my control.  Just as I worked through my frustrations with pigeon pose, only to have them reappear in my chair pose, my frustrations will appear again someplace else once I am comfortable with chair pose again.  Dealing with these frustrations is where my practice really begins.

Maybe Running Isn't That Bad After All...

I'm sure many of you have heard me complain about running.  It's never been my favorite way to exercise and as far as transportation is concerned, there are much more efficient ways to get someplace.  Unfortunately, I'm pretty competitive and I've been hanging around runners.  After some friendly reminders of looming registration deadlines, my non-runner friend and I decided to sign up for the Marine Corps 10k this October.  When we signed up this past winter it seemed like we had forever to get in shape.  I was good about getting in two or three short runs a week in March/April-ish, but that slowed down to pretty much nothing until a few weeks after my July vacation.  To deal with my lack of motivation, I decided to figure out what it was about running that I didn't like.

Reason #1: Shoes
Pretty much the only equipment that running requires is shoes.  As you may know, shoes are one of the few things in the world that I really dislike.  When I would train in high school I'd always run barefoot; swimming is my ideal sport.  Thankfully I learned about Vibram FiveFingers a few years ago and they have become my go to keep-my-feet-out-of-a-surgeon's-hands tool (one time was more than enough).  Runners are advised to transition to FiveFingers slowly in order to give the feet time to strengthen.  My problem was the opposite; my feet and stride were fine to go barefoot, but I didn't have the strength to run more than a mile or two.

Reason #2: Never running for fun
This goes back to my high school field hockey days when we ran and ran and ran and the only thing that kept me running was the terror of dealing with Coach if I stopped.  I never had that experience with swimming or biking and I realized that to train for this 10k I needed a new approach to running.

After returning from vacation, I drew up a plan to address these two problems.  The shoe issue was pretty straight forward.  Since barefoot running is topic du jour, I figured I would have plenty of minimalist shoes to choose from that would give me enough support that I could build up mileage pretty quickly, but minimal enough that I didn't hate them.  However, my tiny feet limited my options to a single pair in stock at the shoe store.  Thankfully they've been great so far and I plan to race in them.  To deal with the running-for-fun problem I realized I just needed to go out and run.  It was pretty tough at first, but eventually I realized that I was kind of enjoying myself.  When I mentioned this to one of my runner friends, he strongly warned against the GPS watch.  Don't worry, I've already run into that problem :-)

Running has been okay for the past few weeks, but we'll see how the next two months go :-)

Just Ride

Last night I was riding over to a local bike shop for their regular Tuesday night ride.  I decided in late July that I wanted to improve my cadence, so I finally broke down and bought a Garmin (I held out for over a year).  I know I look at it way too frequently when I ride, but I didn't realize just how dependent I had become until last night.  I had knocked the cadence sensor out of alignment but I didn't realize it until it was too late to stop and fix it (because I couldn't let the middle aged guys who I have an unofficial race with win).  I didn't know how much it had changed my riding habits until then.  I was rolling away from the shop staring at the blank reading and trying to figure out how I was going to make it through the ride.

Obviously, this wasn't going to directly affect my ability to ride.  I've ridden my entire life up until a few weeks ago without a Garmin.  However, it messed with my head so much that I was a little concerned about how reliant I was on this little computer.  I was actually considering not riding because of a sensor being kicked a few centimeters off.  Bad weather, illness, and mechanical problems didn't phase me, so I was shocked by my reaction to this.

Instead of continuing to freak out, I decided to shut the computer off and just ride.  I've ridden that route with those same guys all summer; I had no need for the data.  I realized that without my computer to race against, I just raced against the same guys I always race against; nothing had actually changed.